Photon In Double-slit

photon in a double-slit refers to a science experiment (also called as a double-slit experiment ) which basically means that light and matter show properties of both waves as well as particles. it basically displays the fundamentally probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical phenomena.

Initially, scientists thought when light travels, it either shows the properties of particles or waves. However, the photon in a double-slit experiment broke this conundrum and denoted that light travels as both waves as well as particles.

in the experiment, a coherent light source, like a laser beam, lights up a plate pierced by two parallel slits, and the light passing through the slits is observed on a screen behind a plate.

The wave nature of light causes the light waves passing through the two slits to interfere, producing bright and dark bands on the screen – something that wouldn’t turn up had it consisted of classical particles. However, the light is always found to be absorbed in the screen at various points as particles and not waves. The interference pattern surfaces through different densities of these particles hitting on the screen.

Alternatively, there are variants of this experiment that include sensors at the slits that find that each photon that’s detected, passes through only one slit just like a classical particle, and not through both slits, as a wave would.

These experiments demonstrate that particles do not form the interference pattern if one detects which slit they pass through thus demonstrating the principle of wave-particle duality.