Einstein's Recoiling Slit Experiment, Complementarity and Uncertainty

TL;DR

This paper reexamines Einstein's recoiling slit experiment, emphasizing the role of entanglement and uncertainty relations in wave-particle duality and which-way detection, offering a clearer understanding of quantum complementarity.

Contribution

It highlights the importance of entanglement in the experiment and derives the duality relation from entanglement and uncertainty principles, providing a new perspective.

Findings

Entanglement between particle and slit is crucial for understanding the experiment.

The Englert-Greenberger-Yasin duality relation can be derived from entanglement and uncertainty.

Uncertainty relations and entanglement are key to the which-way detection process.

Abstract

We analyze Einstein's recoiling slit experiment and point out that the inevitable entanglement between the particle and the recoiling-slit was not part of Bohr's reply. We show that if this entanglement is taken into account, one can provided a simpler answer to Einstein. We also derive the Englert-Greenberger-Yasin duality relation from this entanglement. In addition, we show that the Englert-Greenberger-Yasin duality relation can also be thought of as a consequence of the sum uncertainty relation for certain observables of the recoiling slit. Thus, the uncertainty relations and entanglement are both an integral part of the which-way detection process.