Prof. Afshar's Experiment

Prof. Shahriar Afshar is a physicist from Harvard University (a visiting professor at Rowan University) who has been able to come up with a simple experiment that has challenged a long accepted interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (the principle of complementarity).

Up until now, the accepted theroy was that one cannot detect both the particle and wave property of light in a single experiment. If one tries to detect a photon as a particle, one cannot observe its behaviour as waves and vice versa. Now, Dr Afshar's experiment has shown that it is possible to observe both properties of light in a single experiment.

This experiment is still controversial, but the interesting thing about it is the simplicity of the experiment. It does not require any elaborate experimental setup. Any physics student in the past 70 or 80 years could have done the experiment. However, no one thought of actually doing such an elegant experiment. Not only Dr Afshar's ingenuity, but also his intelectual courage to challenge such an overwhelmingly accepted concept is truly admirable.