ABSTRACT
CONTENTS 24.1 Introduction ..............................................................................................364 24.2 Does Light Really Interfere with Light as Implied by Fourier’s
Theorem and Maxwell’s Wave Equation? ............................................. 367 24.3 Do EM Fields Synthesize New Composite Fields
Under Simple Superposition? .................................................................368 24.4 Do Amplitude-Modulated EM Fields Contain
Fourier Analyzed Frequencies? .............................................................. 371 24.5 Discussion ................................................................................................. 373 Acknowledgments .............................................................................................. 376 References ............................................................................................................ 376
The intention of this chapter is to underscore that to understand fundamentally new properties of light beams, we must first find the limits of semi classical model to explain optical interference phenomena. We claim that we have not yet reached that limit. Careful analysis of the processes behind detecting fringes indicate that the effect of superposition of multiple optical beams can become manifest only through the mediation of the detecting dipoles. Since the detectors are quantum mechanical, (i) the observed effects are different for different detectors for the same superposed light beams, and further, (ii) they are only capable of registering discrete number of “clicks”, whose rate will vary with the incident intensity. A reduced rate of “clicks” at very low intensity
does not prove that light consists of indivisible packets of energy. We have also experimentally demonstrated that (i) neither Fourier synthesis, nor, (ii) Fourier decomposition actually model the behavior of EM fields under all possible circumstances. Superposed light beams of different frequencies do not synthesize a new average optical frequency. A pure amplitude modulated pulse does not contain any of the mathematical, Fourier analyzed frequencies. The QED definition of photon being a Fourier mode in the vacuum, it necessarily becomes non-local. Since we have demonstrated that the Fourier theorem has various limitations in classical physics, its indiscriminate use in quantum mechanics should also be critically reviewed.
