Abstract
Single molecule techniques improve our understanding of the photon and light. If the single photon double slit experiment is performed at the “single photon limit” of a multi-atom light source, faint light pulses with more than one photon hamper the interpretation. Single molecules, quantum dots or defect centres in crystals should be used as light source. “Single photon detectors” do not meet their promise—only “photon number resolving single photon detectors” do so. Particularly, the accumulation time argument, the only safe basis for the postulate of a strictly particle like photon, has so far not yet been verified.
Highlights
The particle aspect of light appears to be an undisputable fact
The early pioneers of the wave particle dualism had a photon in mind which was related more strictly to this common sense view of a particle
The Double Slit Experiment with a Single, Particle Like Photon is More Difficult than Einstein, Bohr, Feynman and Others Believed
Summary
The particle aspect of light appears to be an undisputable fact. in the context of the photon, the definition of the term “particle” is not as straightforward as one might believe, with consequences for the meaning of the wave-particle dualism of light. Experiments proving quantization, for example the Compton-effect or absorption of single light quanta by single atoms or molecules in a cavity do not strictly require that the photon be a particle in the common sense view. Otherwise the extremely short interaction time of a few femtoseconds would make it impossible that a single atom or molecule can absorb a single, freely travelling photon It is this strict particle view, and not the fact of quantization of the light field, which is challenged by single molecule experiments. The fact that light can be described as a quantized field is not disputed This distinction might appear as philosophical fine-tuning, but scientific rigor requires that a clear distinction is made between a strict particle and a more delocalized light quantum. Single molecule experiments rather indicate that the accumulation time argument has so far not yet been experimentally satisfied and that there is no justification to postulate a true particle-like photon
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