Mach-Zehnder Interferometer
The Mach-Zehnder interferometer[117] is a light beam splitting apparatus that’s frequently used to demonstrate quantum effects. It’s easy to set up and easy to explain the experimental thesis. But what actually gets observed doesn’t conform to classical analysis.
In this experiment, start by shining a laser beam toward a beam splitter as shown here:
The beam splitter reflects part of the beam, or light wave, which heads toward the mirror on the bottom left of the figure, and transmits the other part, which is directed towards the mirror shown on the top right. (We’ve implicitly assumed that the beam splitter reflects ...
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