@stared Great game, much appreciated! I have a question about level 20. If I put a sugar glass behind the laser and then two directly at the two outputs of the PBS, it doesn't work (interference triggers the bomb). If I move the two sugar glasses after the PBS behind the two respecitive mirrors next in each path (so the paths become Laser->SG->PBS->Mirror->SG in each arm), the interference works correctly and I pass the level. I just can't wrap my head around why the phase is different in each case. It would be really helpful to be able to inspect the quanta at each point in time so you can see how each element affects phase and polarization exactly.
Quantum Game with Photons
51–53 of 53 posts
Re: Quantum Game with Photons
#52I can't really make sense of interference. I made it to level 6, but I didn't understand the solutions for any of the 3 previous levels. I found some of the online help, but I'm not really making any sense of what it's saying.
I also found the interference in the beam splitters surprising, although experimenting in the game let me work out enough of the logic to finish the levels. I found an article on Wikipedia that, from the pictures, seems to be describe the process... I assume this is the simulated effect? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong%E2%80%93Ou%E2%80%93Mandel...
I don't Hong-Ou-Mandel is a two-photon interference.
So far in this game there is only a single photon, so you get https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%E2%80%93Zehnder_interfero... and https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_e... interferometers.
Re: Quantum Game with Photons
#53@stared Great game, much appreciated! I have a question about level 20. If I put a sugar glass behind the laser and then two directly at the two outputs of the PBS, it doesn't work (interference triggers the bomb). If I move the two sugar glasses after the PBS behind the two respecitive mirrors next in each path (so the paths become Laser->SG->PBS->Mirror->SG in each arm), the interference works correctly and I pass…
Could you send a screenshot?
In any case:
Reflection changes "left-right". So effectively, a sugar solution (rotating polarization) before mirror rotates it in the opposite direction (vs a sugar solution after a mirror). Actually it is a tricky thing I realised while testing this game. I thought it was an error in code. But nope - it was how does physics work. :)