Does a Single Electron Have Wave Properties?

• Published in: Physics of particles and nuclei letters Vol. 18; no. 4; pp. 413 - 428
• Main Author: Bednyakov, V. A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Moscow Pleiades Publishing 01-07-2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Acoustics; Diffraction patterns; Electrons; Particle and Nuclear Physics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Physics of Elementary Particles and Atomic Nuclei. Theory; Quantum mechanics; Schrodinger equation; Single electrons; Wave diffraction
• ISSN: 1547-4771; 1531-8567
• DOI: 10.1134/S1547477121040038

An attempt is made to substantiate the absence of wave properties for a single electron. What is commonly called the corpuscular-wave duality or the wave properties of matter, which appear in the form of a diffraction pattern on the target of certain kind, is a result of the obligatory involvement of a large number of electrons in the diffraction process. In the context of quantum mechanics, a form of the diffraction pattern can be predicted using the rule of adding probability amplitudes, which, in the simplest case, are solutions to the Schrödinger equation for free particles. Therefore, the answer to the question posed in the title sounds something like this:
a single electron has no wave properties; however, they become apparent whenever there are many electrons and a suitable target.