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In the late 17th century, Sir Isaac Newton had advocated that light was corpuscular (particulate), but Christiaan Huygens took an opposing wave description. While Newton had favored a particle approach, he was the first to attempt to reconcile both wave and particle theories of light, and the only one in his time to consider both, thereby anticipating modern wave-particle duality.
This demonstrates the wave–particle duality, which states that all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties: The particle is measured as a single pulse at a single position, while the modulus squared of the wave describes the probability of detecting the particle at a specific place on the screen giving a statistical interference ...
Nevertheless, it has proven very valuable over the years since it has led researchers to provide "increasingly sophisticated demonstrations of the wave–particle duality of single quanta". [21] [22] As one experimenter explains, "Wave and particle behavior can coexist simultaneously." [23]
Matter waves are a central part of the theory of quantum mechanics, being half of wave–particle duality. At all scales where measurements have been practical, matter exhibits wave-like behavior. For example, a beam of electrons can be diffracted just like a beam of light or a water wave.
The culmination of the development is a presentation of two numbers that characterizes the visibility of the interference fringes in the experiment, linked together as the Englert–Greenberger duality relation. The next section will discuss the orthodox quantum mechanical interpretation of the duality relation in terms of wave–particle duality.
Many experiments by J. J. Thompson, Robert Millikan, and Charles Wilson, among others, had shown that free electrons had particle properties. However, in 1924, Louis de Broglie proposed that electrons had an associated wave and Schrödinger demonstrated that wave equations accurately account for electron properties in atoms. Again some ...
This behavior is known as wave–particle duality. In addition to light, electrons, atoms, and molecules are all found to exhibit the same dual behavior when fired towards a double slit. [2] A (simplified) diagram of Quantum Tunneling, a phenomenon by which a particle may move through a barrier which would be impossible under classical mechanics.
Another issue of importance where Bohr and Heisenberg disagreed is wave–particle duality. Bohr maintained that the distinction between a wave view and a particle view was defined by a distinction between experimental setups, whereas Heisenberg held that it was defined by the possibility of viewing the mathematical formulas as referring to ...