Spectra in nested Mach-Zehnder interferometer experiments

Abstract

By the means of the standard quantum mechanics formalism I present an explicit derivation of the structure of power spectra in Danan {\em et al.} and Zhou {\em et al.} experiments with nested dynamically changing Mach-Zehnder interferometers. The analysis confirms that we observe prominent, first-order peaks on frequencies related to some of the elements of the interferometer, but not on others. However, as I shall demonstrate, there are also other, weaker effects related to all relevant elements of the setup. In case of the Danan {\em et al.} setup, there are even peaks at all frequencies of element oscillations. When confronted in an experiment, these observations shall challenge the interpretation of the experiments based on anomalous trajectories of light.