- #1
Gerinski
- 323
- 15
Hi,
CMB photons reaching our telescopes have traveled for over 13 billion years without interacting with anything.
If I understand correctly, from the event of the photon emission, its wavefunction gradually spreads, encompassing more and more possible states for the photon, coexisting in superposition, until the photon will interact with another quantum (the detector in our telescope). So for example, the longer the photon travels the bigger the chances that it will collapse in a more improbable state. If the photon has a certain momentum and it interacts very shortly after its emission, most chances are that it will collapse at a location in the precise direction of its momentum. But the longer it travels undisturbed, the possible states diverge and the more chances that it will collapse at a location a bit farther from the original momentum line.
If this is the case, after 13 billion years the wavefunction of the CMB photons should have spread enormously and contain many possible different states (i.e. locations where the photon may collapse) in the superposition, including many which would have seemed very improbable at much earlier epochs during the photon's travel.
So by the time they finally interact, there should be significant chances of an unlikely state to become the actual outcome of the collapse.
Following this reasoning it seems that we should expect the CMB to show significant "distortions", its photons collapsing at relatively unlikely locations and not in the line of the momentum they were originally emitted.
Is this reasoning more or less correct?
Thanks
CMB photons reaching our telescopes have traveled for over 13 billion years without interacting with anything.
If I understand correctly, from the event of the photon emission, its wavefunction gradually spreads, encompassing more and more possible states for the photon, coexisting in superposition, until the photon will interact with another quantum (the detector in our telescope). So for example, the longer the photon travels the bigger the chances that it will collapse in a more improbable state. If the photon has a certain momentum and it interacts very shortly after its emission, most chances are that it will collapse at a location in the precise direction of its momentum. But the longer it travels undisturbed, the possible states diverge and the more chances that it will collapse at a location a bit farther from the original momentum line.
If this is the case, after 13 billion years the wavefunction of the CMB photons should have spread enormously and contain many possible different states (i.e. locations where the photon may collapse) in the superposition, including many which would have seemed very improbable at much earlier epochs during the photon's travel.
So by the time they finally interact, there should be significant chances of an unlikely state to become the actual outcome of the collapse.
Following this reasoning it seems that we should expect the CMB to show significant "distortions", its photons collapsing at relatively unlikely locations and not in the line of the momentum they were originally emitted.
Is this reasoning more or less correct?
Thanks