Quantitative complementarity in two-path interferometry

Abstract

The quantitative formulation of Bohr's complementarity proposed by Greenberger and Yasin is applied to some physical situations for which analytical expressions are available. This includes a variety of conventional double-slit experiments, but also particle oscillations, as in the case of the neutral-kaon system, and Mott scattering of identical nuclei. For all these cases, a unified description can be achieved including a new parameter $\ensuremath{\nu},$ which quantifies the effective number of fringes one can observe in each specific interferometric setup.