Afshar Experiment - Experimental Setup

Experimental Setup

The experiment uses a setup similar to that for the double-slit experiment. In Afshar's variant, light generated by a laser passes through two closely spaced circular pinholes (not slits). After the dual pinholes, a lens refocuses the light so that the image of each pinhole falls on separate photon-detectors (Fig. 1). A photon that goes through pinhole number one impinges only on detector number one, and similarly, if it goes through pinhole two it impinges only on detector number two, which is why we see the pinholes separately in the image plane close to the mirrors before the photon-detectors.

When the light acts as a wave, because of quantum interference one can observe that there are regions that the photons avoid, called dark fringes. A grid of thin wires is placed just before the lens (Fig. 2) so that the wires lie in the dark fringes of an interference pattern which is produced by the dual pinhole setup. If one of the pinholes is blocked, the interference pattern will no longer be formed, and some of the light will be blocked by the wires. Consequently, the image quality is reduced.

When one pinhole is closed, the grid of wires causes appreciable diffraction in the light, and blocks a certain amount of light received by the corresponding photon-detector. However, when both pinholes are open, the effect of the wires is negligible, comparable to the case in which there are no wires placed in front of the lens (Fig.3), because the wires lie in the dark fringes, which the photons avoid. The effect is not dependent on the light intensity (photon flux).