Software-aided discussion about classical picture of Mach–Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

The Mach–Zehnder interferometer has played an important role both in quantum and classical physics research over the years. In physics education, it has been used as a didactic tool for quantum physics teaching, allowing fundamental concepts, such as particle–wave duality, to be addressed from the very beginning. For a student to understand the novelties of the quantum scenario, it is first worth introducing the classical picture. In this paper, we introduce a new version of the software developed by our research group to deepen the discussion on the classical picture of the Mach–Zehnder interferometer. We present its equivalence with the double slit experiment and we derive the mathematical expressions relating to the interference pattern. We also explore the concept of visibility (which is very important for understanding wave–particle complementarity in quantum physics) to help students become familiar with this experiment and to enhance their knowledge of its counterintuitive aspects. We use the software articulated by the mathematical formalism and phenomenological features. We also present excerpts of the discursive interactions of students using the software in didactic situations.

Louis de Broglie's wave-particle duality: from textbooks’ blackboxes to a chain of reference presentation

“…However, the wave-particle duality is still a major theme in contemporary Quantum Physics historiography [15], [26] and its historical and conceptual relevance also motivates contemporary research in Quantum Physics Teaching [27]- [29], besides of being a common subject in Quantum Physics courses in undergraduate and high-school levels [18], [30]. We highlight that this topic may be approached in different trends of Quantum Physics Teaching such as the development of didactic experiments [31]- [36], the use of metaphors [37], [38], production of tutorials [29], [39], [40], the use of computational simulations [41]- [46], the analysis of didactic textbooks [47], [48], and so on .…”

Quantum coherence versus interferometric visibility in a generalized Mach-Zehnder interferometer

“…It is noteworthy that the authors in Refs. [29,30] already considered such general setup for didactic purposes.…”

“…2, where we plotted V 0 and V 1 as a function of T 1 and T 2 . It's worth mentioning that V 0 is not defined for the points T 1 = T 2 = 0 and R 1 = R 2 = 0 whereas V 1 is not defined for the points T 1 = R 2 = 0 and R 1 = T 2 = 0 [29]. However this is not a problem, since, for instance, if T 1 = T 2 = 0 the quanton always hit the detector D 1 , and there's no interference pattern.…”

Teaching wave-particle complementarity using the Virtual Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

“…The main purpose of this paper is to take an additional step towards a comprehensive presentation of the Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI), revisiting the discussion on interference phenomena carried out in our previous work [1], supported by the same software -the Virtual Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (VMZI). The additional step consists in moving from classical to quantum interference phenomena, in order to address important fundamental concepts of quantum physics, not quantitatively addressed in our previous works.…”