Speaker
Description
It is well-known that the quantum interference pattern in a two-slit experiment cannot be reduced to a sum of two single-slit patterns. However, as first noted by Rafael Sorkin, even when one has a variant of such an experiment consisting of three or more slits, quantum mechanics predicts that the resulting interference pattern can be reduced to a sum of two-slit patterns. Therefore, quantum mechanics is a theory exhibiting second-order interference but not higher.
Given that, in principle, Nature could admit interference of higher-order, such a possibility has been extensively investigated both experimentally and theoretically. Higher-order interference has been constrained via a wide range of interferometric experiments, often designed as tests of the Born rule. On the theoretical side, there exist frameworks that allow for the possibility of higher-order interference. However, the analytic form of an equation of motion (akin to Heisenberg’s equation of motion for quantum mechanics) for such theories has remained an open problem. In this talk, we will discuss our proposal for a possible dynamics describing theories exhibiting third-order interference.