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In the double slit experiment, an interaction with a detecting mechanism is needed to know which slit was the one the photon or electron passed through.

I read in other questions that polarized filters are placed in the slits, how is it exactly that this helps us know which slit the photon passed through?

Do experiments using electrons also use polarized filters? If not, what do they use and how does it work?

Are there other types of detecting devices?

Is there a detecting device that truly does not change any properties of the photon or electron when interacting with it?

LLucasAlday
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  • There may be many physical realizations of double slit experiment (which is taught mostly as pedagogical tool than a description of a real device). See, e.g., this answer – Roger V. Jun 20 '23 at 07:48

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I read in other questions that polarized filters are placed in the slits, how is it exactly that this helps us know which slit the photon passed through?

I think it is not used particularly for helping in the positioning, rather it is used for experimental stability reasons.

See this experiment from Kaur, et. Al. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-68181-1#Sec4 :

Optical narrow band pass filters are placed in front of each photon detector to stop the background light.

You can see that, at least from my interpretation of their work, it is rather to further suppress background light (as the single-photon detectors are extremely sensitive to background fluctuations).

Are there other types of detecting devices?

Typically you use single-photon avalanche photodetectors as they have very high sensitivity for these types of experiments.

For questions about quantum behavior and electron detection I would let a different expert take over as my understanding is more limited.

ondas
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