Can wave-particle duality be a source of quantum nonlocality?

Abstract

In matter wave interferometry, detectors detect individual particles; the wave picture (interference pattern) emerges only as a statistical aggregation, after a large number of particles have been detected. Feynman, mystified by such facts, declared that 'nobody understands quantum mechanics'. A few decades later, Ketterle summed up the situation as 'one gets used to preparing waves and detecting particles'. But why are matter waves detected only as particles? Is there a law of nature forbidding their detection as waves? This question does not seem to have been addressed. The present communication suggests that it may be possible to detect matter waves as waves if there exists a nonlocal interaction - due to wave-particle duality - that causes a nonlocal transfer of energy and momentum from microscopic objects to mesoscopic or macroscopic ones. It describes the principle of a possible wave detector and the scheme of an experiment. The experiment may be feasible in the foreseeable future with a mesoscopic detector made of carbon nanostructures, or in an earth satellite in an elliptical orbit. The detection of a single atom or molecule as a wave will have enormous consequences, both practical and conceptual.