Macroscopic Violation of Duality Generated on a Laser Beam

Abstract

It is shown theoretically and experimentally that passage of a laser beam through particular conventional Ronchi gratings prepares the beam in an altered state that violates quantum duality. The violation is characterized by a readily measured net transfer of energy between the prepared beam and an unmodified beam from a similar, independent laser. Notably, the experiment is conducted with the beams at macroscopic power levels where measurability of the duality-violating transfer is vastly improved over that of the discrete photon regime. These results are consistent with other recently reported experiments that have challenged the validity of the duality-related principle of complementarity.