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A thought experiment I was pondering - Say there's a photon source and two observers, one at rest and one in motion relative to the photon source.

It would seem that at the point the photon is emitted, it 'knows' where it will be observed, because it will travel at c for the particular observer.

I was thinking that this might be because the wavefunction for the photon hasn't collapsed until it is actually observed. Does that mean that the wavefunction of a photon contains the possibilities of all paths including all observers at the endpoints of each path, and is that any different to saying the wavefunction includes all paths?

joshua.thomas.bird
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1 Answers1

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  1. you are right, the photon will be observed to have traveled with speed c by any observer

  2. yes the wavefunction is not collapsed until observed

  3. the wavefunction is the probability distribution of the photon

  4. there is no new information created by observing the photon, because like you write, the wavefunction already has the probability of the photon being at all locations

  5. when you observe the photon, you are just mapping the probability distrbution

  6. yes as you write, in this case you could say that the wavefunction maps the paths probability distribution

  7. you are right, it does not matter if an observer is in motion or at rest, they will all see the photon travel at speed c

  8. you are thinking this the wrong way, because you think the photon moves faster then the observers. But it is the photon that moves at speed c, that is constant, and all the observers are just relative to that.

Árpád Szendrei
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