Yes they do destroy interference. If the photon is scattered by the smoke or reflected off the screen, you can't coax interference out of it. The unscattered photons carry on interfering.Quantum Waver said:Going back to the first video, I have a naive question about measurement. Both the screen and the smoke act as measurements, but they don't destroy interference, even if one photon were emitted at a time. So why does using a detector cause decoherence? Is it because it's detecting photons in one specific location, or is it because the detector is a complex macroscopic object?
Debates around measurement, collapse and decoherence seem to confuse the issue as to exactly when and why a measurement destroys the interference pattern. If the environment is causing decoherence, then why does the smoke and screen still allow for an interference pattern?