The Young-Feynman controlled double-slit electron interference experiment

The key features of quantum mechanics are vividly illustrated by the Young-Feynman two-slit thought experiment, whose second part discusses the recording of an electron distribution with one of the two slits partially or totally closed by an aperture. Here, we realize the original Feynman proposal i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tavabi, Amir H., Boothroyd, Chris B., Yücelen, Emrah, Frabboni, Stefano, Gazzadi, Gian Carlo, Dunin-Borkowski, Rafal E., Pozzi, Giulio
Other Authors: School of Materials Science and Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2019
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/85328
http://hdl.handle.net/10220/49796
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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Summary:The key features of quantum mechanics are vividly illustrated by the Young-Feynman two-slit thought experiment, whose second part discusses the recording of an electron distribution with one of the two slits partially or totally closed by an aperture. Here, we realize the original Feynman proposal in a modern electron microscope equipped with a high brightness gun and two biprisms, with one of the biprisms used as a mask. By exciting the microscope lenses to conjugate the biprism plane with the slit plane, observations are carried out in the Fraunhofer plane with nearly ideal control of the covering of one of the slits. A second, new experiment is also presented, in which interference phenomena due to partial overlap of the slits are observed in the image plane. This condition is obtained by inserting the second biprism between the two slits and the first biprism and by biasing it in order to overlap their images.