[osamagirl69]

It is a very nice article, and very well articulated.

However, this article falls into a pet peeve of mine which is that the behavior exhibited here can also be completely explained classically -- this is also a standard demo when explaining how polarization works classically. I feel that it is worth it to at least include a footnote to that effect. The reason that I bring it up is that I (as someone who first learned classical optics, but is now learning quantum optics) personally suffered from some deep rooted misunderstandings about quantum mechanics due to having seen so many of these simplified demos which do not actually capture the quantum nature of light.

The way this article is presented it implies that one can also model quantum phenomenon using maxwells equations -- which is obviously not true. In this specific case you get the same answer, but as soon as you start looking at the individual photon statistics your answers will start to diverge. This is where the actually quantum things like Bells inequality and the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect come into play. If people had just been up front with their descriptions 'oh by the way, when you look at the aggregate behavior of photons they look perfectly classical, it is only when you look at the statistics do they behave any different' it would have saved me a lot of soul searching and misguided contempt for the quantum community.

[dhruvp]

Hey - this is perfectly reasonable and constructive feedback - thank you! I see your point that the polarization example can be explained using classical approaches. I wanted to explain it in terms of individual photons as I wanted to use this to help provide some visual intuition for qubits. Photon polarization is a nice, visual way of interpreting qubits and as such lent itself well to the task.

EDIT: I've gone ahead and added the footnote. Thanks for the suggestion!