The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.
School of Engineering and Sciences, Tecnológico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon 64849, Mexico.
Nat Commun. 2016 Dec 23;7:13987. doi: 10.1038/ncomms13987.
The validity of the superposition principle and of Born's rule are well-accepted tenants of quantum mechanics. Surprisingly, it has been predicted that the intensity pattern formed in a three-slit experiment is seemingly in contradiction with the most conventional form of the superposition principle when exotic looped trajectories are taken into account. However, the probability of observing such paths is typically very small, thus rendering them extremely difficult to measure. Here we confirm the validity of Born's rule and present the first experimental observation of exotic trajectories as additional paths for the light by directly measuring their contribution to the formation of optical interference fringes. We accomplish this by enhancing the electromagnetic near-fields in the vicinity of the slits through the excitation of surface plasmons. This process increases the probability of occurrence of these exotic trajectories, demonstrating that they are related to the near-field component of the photon's wavefunction.
叠加原理和玻恩定则是量子力学中公认的基本原理。令人惊讶的是，人们已经预测到，当考虑到奇特的循环轨迹时，在三缝实验中形成的强度模式似乎与最传统的叠加原理形式相矛盾。然而，观察到这种路径的概率通常非常小，因此极难测量。在这里，我们通过直接测量其对光的干涉条纹形成的贡献，证实了玻恩定则的有效性，并首次观察到了奇特轨迹作为光的附加路径。我们通过激发表面等离激元来增强狭缝附近的电磁场近场来实现这一点。这一过程增加了这些奇特轨迹发生的概率，证明了它们与光子波函数的近场分量有关。
