Single photon interference and quantum-classical phase transition with spontaneous superposition breaking

TL;DR

This paper models single photon interference as a quantum phase transition involving spontaneous superposition breaking, linking measurement collapse to symmetry breaking phenomena across physics domains.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism viewing quantum measurement as a spontaneous symmetry breaking process, unifying collapse with phase transition concepts.

Findings

Photon-entanglement with photographic plates analyzed

Collapse interpreted as a symmetry-breaking phase transition

Unified framework for measurement and phase transitions proposed

Abstract

In this work we accurately consider quantum dynamical interaction (or entanglement) between single photon and usual photographic plate as photon coordinate detector in well-known experiments of single photon interference at beam splitter (and analogous experiments). Also, we here consider final measurement or detection procedure (collapse) as a quantum-classical continuous phase transition with spontaneous (non-dynamical) unitary symmetry (superposition) breaking (effective hiding). Practically, collapse as an effective (non-absolute) phenomena can be considered as an especial case of the general formalism of spontaneous symmetry breaking (with applications in many different domains of the physics, e.g. in elasticity of rigid bodies, quantum theory of ferromagnetism, quantum theory of electro-weak interactions as well as in chaotic inflation cosmology).