Question

What is the electric field near the two paths during a Stern-Gerlach experiment where both paths are recombined?

Since we can't know which path the electron took, what's stopping us from simply sitting near the paths and monitoring for any kind of electric flux?

Answer 1

In the Stern-Gerlach experiment we have a deflection of the trajectory of a beam of silver atoms, due to a magnetic field, and silver atoms are neutral objects, which don't interact with an electric field. An electric field can be used if we perform the Stern-Gerlach experiment with charged particle, for example electrons, in order to eliminate the effect of the electric charge rotation inside a magnetic field

Answer 2

I should have been more clear, but specifically I mean performing the Stern-Gerlach experiment with electrons with this type of configuration:



Out of box A comes electrons aligned in the up direction of the z-axis. They enter the box B which splits them into two paths, spin left and spin right along the x-axis. They are reflected and returned back to box C where they are combined and box C then aligns the electrons along the z-axis and shoots them out against a wall where we measure them all to be aligned in the up-direction along the z-axis like we expect.

Agreed on that much? All I'm saying is the spin up z state is a superposition of spin x in both directions and we are not measuring them until the very end. This is fairly standard I believe.