Implications of The Experiment
The conventional double-slit experiment shows that determining which path a particle takes prevents the interference pattern from forming. To avoid the notion that the photon somehow "knows" when the "other" slit is open or closed (or is being watched), Wheeler suggested 'detecting' which slit the photon used only long after it passed through the slits. Wheeler asked what happens when a single photon, presumably already determined to get detected as part of a two-slit interference pattern, suddenly gets detected in a path coming from only one slit. Does the interference pattern then disappear?
In terms of the traditional double-slit apparatus, the Wheeler delayed choice experiment is to put telescopes that are pointed directly at each of the two slits behind the removable detector wall. If the photon goes through telescope A it is argued that it must have come by way of slit A, and if it goes through telescope B it is argued that it must have come by way of slit B.
Wheeler planned a thought experiment in which two ways of observing an incoming photon could be used, and the decision of which one to use could be made after the photon had cleared the double-slit part of the apparatus. At that point a detection screen could either be raised or lowered. If the detection screen were to be put in place, Wheeler fully expected that the photon would interfere with itself and (if many more photons were permitted to follow it to the screen) would form part of a series of fringes due to interference. If, on the other hand, the detection screen were to be removed, then:
Sufficiently far beyond the region of the plate, the beams from upper and lower slits cease to overlap and become well separated. There place photodetectors. Let each have an opening such that it records with essentially 100 percent probability a quantum of energy arriving in its own beam, and with essentially zero probability a quantum arriving in the other beam.
In that case, he argues, "one of the two counters will go off and signal in which beam — and therefore from which slit — the photon has arrived."
Read more about this topic: Wheeler's Delayed Choice Experiment
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