Wave-particle duality: a learning object based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer

We present an electronic resource aimed for supporting the teaching and allowing the independent study of wave-particle duality in quantum physics. Following other authors, we choose the Mach-Zehnder interferometer as a convenient illustration of the concepts. The material is organized as a "learning object", the central element of which is an interactive and commented animation. Auxiliary texts present the underlying mathematical formalism as well as information of historical, epistemological and experimental nature. Three levels of description are considered successively in the animation. The first shows the beam in the approximation of geometric optics, while the second analyzes the purely ondulatory aspects. The third level presents the quantum-corpuscular view, introducing wave packets associated with individual photons and displaying the relation between counting and wave function. Inserting a detector in one arm of the instrument allows the discussion of the classical issue of the path followed by the photon. The animation presents visualizations of the ingredients which underlie theoretical descriptions, such as wave fronts, phase shifts, superpositions, and separations of wave packets into components. Taking literally the most usual interpretation of quantum mechanics, we exhibit on the computer screen the "state collapse" induced by observation. We believe that such theoretic-conceptual visualizations usefully complement a realistic simulation of the experimental device developed by other authors.