What and how the Michelson interferometer measures

TL;DR

This paper clarifies what the Michelson interferometer measures, emphasizing the importance of particle carriers in light and presenting experimental methods to accurately measure Earth's absolute velocity while addressing historical misunderstandings.

Contribution

The paper provides a corrected relativistically invariant formula for aether wind speed measurements and demonstrates experimental techniques to reduce noise and false signals in Michelson interferometry.

Findings

Fringe shift occurs only with particle carriers in light.

Measured Earth's absolute velocity as 140-480 km/s.

Provided methods to minimize noise and false interferences.

Abstract

Proposed by Maxwell in 1879 detector of aether seems, at a superficial glance, a simple device. For example, Michelson in 1881 thought that he built an instrument that (when you turn it in the horizontal plane) will measure in vacuum (refractive index n=1) the harmonic shift of the interference fringe. In reality the case is much more involved. Not at once it was understood (the misunderstanding lasted about 90 years) that the shift of interference fringe occurs only when the carriers of light contain particles, i.e. have n>1. In 1968-1975 I have demonstrated experimentally that during the pumping of the gas from the zones where the light propagates, i.e. with decreasing the number of particles of the light's carrier, along with the reduction of noise disturbances always necessarily vanishes the harmonic shift of the interference fringe. As soon as the correlation of the observability of the fringe shift with the concentration of particles in the light's carrier has been taken into account, I was able to reliably measure the speed of absolute motion of the Earth as a few hundred km/s. In the sixth version I corrected the slip in formula (21). There is suggested for experimenters the advice how to diminish below the measurable level of the sought-for signal the harmful influence of the noise and false interferences, and for interpreters of measurements of non-zero fringe shift the derivation is given of a relativistically invariant formula of the aether wind speed that agrees with the experiments in optical media with 1<n<1.8. In the publication Phys.Lett.A 374 (2010) 1110 I reported about measuring the horizontal projection of absolute velocity of the Earth at the latitude of Obninsk as 140-480 km/s depending on the time of day and night. This experimental result became possible only owing to that I was able to overcome the above mentioned methodical and interpretational artifacts.