Yuan and Feng (Eur. Phys. J. Plus 138:70, 2023) recently proposed a modification of the nested Mach–Zehnder interferometer experiment performed by Danan et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 111:240402, 2013) and argued that photons give “contradictory” answers about where they have been, when traces are locally imprinted on them in different ways. They concluded that their results are comprehensible from what they call the “three-path interference viewpoint,” but difficult to explain from the “discontinuous trajectory” viewpoint advocated by Danan et al. We argue that the weak trace approach (the basis of the “discontinuous trajectory” viewpoint) provides a consistent explanation of the Yuan–Feng experiment. The contradictory messages of the photons are just another example of photons lying about where they have been when the experimental method of Danan et al. is applied in an inappropriate setup.
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Abstract -
Bhati and Arvind (2022) recently argued that in a specially designed experiment the timing of photon detection events demonstrates photon presence at a location at which they are not present according to the weak value approach. The alleged contradiction is resolved by a subtle interference effect resulting in anomalous sensitivity of the signal imprinted on the postselected photons for the interaction at this location, similarly to the case of a nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a Dove prism (Alonso and Jordan (2015)). We perform an in-depth analysis of the characterization of the presence of a pre- and postselected particle at a particular location based on information imprinted on the particle itself. The theoretical results are tested by a computer simulation of the proposed experimentmore » « less
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