Delayed Choice Experiment

[Widdekind]

What would happen, if you performed a modified DC experiment, using a (switchable) Beam Splitter, instead of a (switchable) Mirror; and, then, lengthening the "switch line" (using Optical Delay Circuits), so that those portions of the photon's Wave Packet, which impinge upon the Interferometer, arrive "first", long before the "switch line" Wave Packet portion reaches its detector.

 

QUESTION: Insofar, as wave function collapse is caused by contact, with the Detectors, would a longer "switch line" allow the Interference Pattern, observable at the intersection, of the "main lines", to be observed (in ~50% of the trials, i.e., at reduced intensity) ??

 

 

Fig. 2 --

Wave Packet

portions in (transparent) red, showing "tenuous tendril tails" of probability amplitude connecting them.

 

According to Greenstein & Zajonc's Quantum Challenge (pg. ~40), photon wave functions can be diffusively extended, across considerable spans of space -- even "billions & billions of miles", clear across the Solar System (in principle). Now, in John Wheeler's "quasar DC experiment", then, could we not interpret the photon's wave functions, as being de-localized, across the cosmos? Indeed, quantum entanglement functions (in principle) across the cosmos, too (from the "tenuous tendril tails", of probability amplitude, spanning the space between the wave packet portions). Evidently, the curvature of spacetime "in the background", causes the photon "spherical wave" to converge back upon itself.

 

 

 

 

QUESTION: If the wave function, of a space-traveling photon, actually extends across the cosmos, then wouldn't the presence, of matter "in the middle" (the galaxy, in the figure), by virtue of being a potential absorber of photons "en route", actually reduce the signal intensity, received at Earth ??