Whence the Quantum? by Luis de la Pena, Ana Maria Cetto, and Andrea Valdes Hernandez

Luis de la Pena

Essay Abstract

We identify an assumption that pervades the whole of quantum physics, and show that its replacement with something that is closer to the real world helps solve many of the present-day quantum puzzles. Classical physics negated the zero-point radiation field, and this assumption remained virtually untouched all along the development of quantum physics. When this field is considered seriously, the quantum description emerges in a most natural way.

Author Bio

Luis de la Pena (PhD, Moscow State University) is emeritus professor at the Instituto de Fisica, UNAM, Mexico. Most of his recent research has been in the foundations of quantum theory. Ana Maria Cetto (MA, Harvard University, PhD, UNAM) is research professor at the Instituto de Fisica, UNAM. Most of her research is in the foundations of quantum theory. Andrea Valdes-Hernandez (PhD, UNAM) has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Instituto de Fisica, UFRJ, Brazil. Besides quantum optics she devotes a good part of her time to the foundations of quantum theory.

Download Essay PDF File

[deleted]

I have always thought that the ZPE approach to understanding the microcosm was a very promising start towards a physical understanding of QM without the smoke, mirrors, or Bohr's denial of our ability to actually understand nature on a deep level.

I suspect that when you combine this ZPE approach with the concept of an infinite hierarchy characterized by discrete cosmological self-similarity, i.e., an unbounded discrete fractal paradigm, then much of the empirically observed phenomena of the atomic and subatomic levels will lend themselves to simple and natural physics based primarily on GR, EM and nonlinear dynamical systems theory. A new quantum mechanics conforming more to Schrodinger's original vision of it remains a very interesting possibility.

Keep fighting the good fight!

[deleted]

Thanks for your encouraging comment.

You have a nice way of putting it: QM without smoke, mirrors, or Bohr's denial of our ability to actually understand nature. However, we would prefer to say "without Bohr's denial of our possibility to go farther than observed". Bohr made an effort to understand nature, but of course, from his personal point of view, i.e. negating the possibility of the human mind to go beyond the experiment.

Your concept of a discrete cosmological fractal structure is novel and very appealing; it suggests that the trajectories followed by electrons should be fractals - or at least stochastic, on which of course we are in full agreement.

We hope your concept of cosmological scales can find its place in the description of nature.

Robert Oldershaw

Thanks for your encouragement.

Here is what I mean regarding Bohr's "natural philosophy".

When asked whether a particular QM algorithim was mirroring an underlying physical reality, Bohr responded: "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that it is the task of physics is to find out how nature IS. Physics concerns what we can say about nature."

Personally, I think Einstein was the natural pilosopher and Bohr was the mechanic.

If there is a discrete self-similar Subquantum Scale underlying the Atomic Scale, then it would do for the Atomic Scale what the Atomic Scale does for the Stellar Scale. And all with the exact same neoclassical physics, just occurring on different discrete M, L, T scales.

Robert Oldershaw

PS: The resolution of the vacuum energy density problem, according to the discrete fractal paradigm, can be found at the link below.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0901.3381

[deleted]

It is not so frequent to find such an inspiring paper.

Jayakar Joseph

Dear Luis de la Pena,

Quantum vacuum fluctuation is expressional with a modified brane world scenario also, in that, tetrahedral-branes of eigen-rotational strings, is been assigned to describe a quantum noumenon.

With best wishes,

Jayakar

[deleted]

Dear Jayakar,

It is nice to find that from our so different perspectives we are both led to vacuum fluctuations as an essential theoretical ingredient.

All the best,

Luis

Vladimir Tamari

Dear Professors de la Pena and Cetto and Dr. Valdes Hernandes.

Greetings. I hesitate to write critically of the learned paper you have presented. Like you I strive to search for a simpler more rational and harmonious physics, but my approach is geometrical and mostly qualitative.

You distinguish between ZPF and matter, and if I understand you correctly, you base your conclusions on thermodynamical and stochastic considerations. I rather like to think Nature is exquisitely ordered at the smallest scales, and have shown how the probability interpretation, although it 'works' emerges from the mistaken notion of the point photon. (Please see Eric Reiter's fqxi essay about that).

I would be honored if you can read my fqxi essay Fix Physics! , which is based on my 2005 Beautiful Universe Theory . In this (BU) theory the vacuum, radiation and matter are all made up of just one type of building block: a node rotating in units of Planck's constant (h) and self-assembling in a universal lattice to (hopefully!) create all of physics. You can consider the vacuum portions of this ether lattice as ZPF but it is not random. Your critical evaluation and comments are most welcome.

To paraphrase Freda Kahlo: Viva la Natura!

With best wishes,

Vladimir

[deleted]

Dear Vladimir,

Thanks for your kind words. As you surely noticed, we are just trying to understand the deep physical meaning of quantum mechanics, being convinced that this understanding is essential to allow us to go to deeper levels of nature. You cannot unify what you do not understand.

Your essay looks really appealing. But, like you, also we hesitate to write critically on it before a careful reading.

All the best,

Luis, Ana María and Andrea

Israel Perez

Dear Dr. Luis, Ana and Andrea

It is nice seeing people from my country. I'm an experimental physicists working in condensed matter and I realized my graduate studies in Mexico. I am very familiar with the works of Dr. Luis de la Peña and his famous book in Mexico. I would like to congratulate you for your fine and very interesting essay. I would like to make a couple of comments and at the same time invite you to read my essay which I believe has a deep connection with your work.

Although not widely understood in the community of physicists, it appears that the huge difference in energy densities between the ZPE and the cosmological energy is one of the deepest puzzles in physics. From my view, the resolution of this problem will be decisive for the future of physics. Some people contend that the ZPF is not real, that there are no experimental evidences to support it and claim that the Cassimir effect can be explained without alluding to the ZPE. Just in case you are interested I leave you a reference in which the effect is explained without need of the ZPF: R. L. Jaffee PRD, 72, 021301 (2005). Despite this I am confident that the laws of quantum physics are very solid and that the reality of the ZPF can be experimentally demonstrated.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the vacuum energy makes allusion to the aether that dominated the mind of physicists at the end of the XIX century. The difference between the vacuum energy and the aether is that the former is not material. This being said, I wonder in my essay, how our conception of the world would be today if the aether had never been ruled out from physics. My work basically claims that, from the experimental point of view, the notion of the preferred system of reference is not at variance with the principle of relativity, and thus the notion of the aether remains still legitimate. This could be useful to solve many of the problems of contemporary physics. I would be grateful if you could take some time to read my work and leave me some comments.

Best regards

Israel

[deleted]

Dear Israel,

Thanks for your kind words, and congratulations for your well-written essay!

About the experimental observation of the zero-point field: detection of it is not a simple matter because every (material) detector is subject to its action. It would perhaps be easier to observe changes in the spatial structure of this field, due for example to the opening and closing of a slit. The Casimir effect is due to a change of a similar nature, but since, as you say, it can be explained without alluding to the ZPF, it cannot be used as convincing evidence.

From the point of view of our theory, one could say that the emergence of quantum mechanics itself is the most solid proof of the existence of the ZPF. What would be interesting to test is the behavior of the ZPF-matter system for very short times, before the quantum regime is reached. But the pervasiveness of the ZPF makes it difficult to think of such an experimental test - at least for the time being.

Suerte y muchos saludos,

Best regards,

Luis, Ana and Andrea

Lawrence Crowell

I have encountered the stochastic electrodynamics in the past. It is what I might call quantum Langevin theory, where there is the associated Fokker-Planck equation. In some ways this is similar to the Bohm approach to QM as well, where a Hamilton-Jacobi equation contains a quantum potential. These approaches to QM have from what I understand have a problem with treating intrinsic spin.

The FLRW equation

(a'/a)^2 = H^2 = 8πGρ/3

define a cosmological constant Λ = 8πGρ/3 for the mass energy density ρ = constant. If the mass energy density is ρ = ħ sum_nω_n (assuming a box normalization approximation), then the summation will lead to the 123 order of magnitude larger value than what is actually measured.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Thanks for your comments and your interest in our essay.

Formally our theory may appear similar to the Bohm approach of QM; however, physically they are very different. We are indeed dealing with a stochastic process and therefore use the appropriate mathematical machinery. The point is that the presence of the zero-point field makes the difference; without it, the problem would be strictly classical. As we show in our papers, once the system (matter plus field) reaches the state in which energy balance (or ergodicity) holds, it obeys quantum laws. This is completely foreign to Bohm's approach.

With regard to the spin we have little to say at this point, because the corresponding theory is still under development. Some first results can be seen in our book The Quantum Dice (see reference in the essay).

The problem you point out about the cosmological constant is indeed, as we remark in the essay and is well known, one of the major problems of contemporary physics, and of course not exclusive of our theory.

Best,

Luis, Ana and Andrea

Lawrence Crowell

I am not sure how relevant this to stochastic QFT, but I have done some work using the BCFW recursion relationship with respect to AdS ~ CFT correspondence. My essay is an overview of this work of mine, with two collaborators (Corda and Glinka) and the recursion formula of Britto, Cachazo, Feng and Witten, where the references therein give more detail. This is a recursion formulation of Feynman diagrams on the tree level, or on shell. BTW, this has become in the last few years of growing interest, and forms the basis of the "BlackHat" algorithm used to compute scattering processes for data analysis at the LHC. The work by Bern, Kosower and Dixon, has been instrumental in these developments. This reduces calculation complexity, and it also reduces the role of quantum field locality, and in its full form does not appeal to unitarity.

The loop corrections to the BCFW amplitudes are in your language the result of this quantum stochastic field. The tree diagrams are O(1), while the first loop order is O(ħ) and so forth with O(ħ^n) the nth loop order. The beauty of the recursion formula is that everything can be decomposed down to the tree level. The building blocks of quantum corrections are tree level diagrams with p^2 = m^2. You might take some interest in this, for there appears to be some underlying similarity here.

I'd be interested in hearing what your opinions are of my paper in general. This gets into string theory, D-branes and the rest. I think that string theory is a "theory of something," though I question whether it is the whole picture.

Cheers LC

[deleted]

Luis, Ana and Andrea,

I believe that you make a very good point about the importance of ZPE, but I do not think that you have taken this concept far enough. It is possible to show that all particles, fields and forces are made of the single building block of 4 dimensional spacetime. In this case, spacetime is filled with ZPE at all frequencies up to Planck frequency. This concept is developed in a book available for download at OnlySpacetime.com. This book shows that particles, gravity, electric fields, the strong force and cosmology can be derived from ZPE. One of the many insights derived from this approach is that it can be shown that there is a previously unknown simple mathematical relationship between the gravitational force and the electromagnetic force when both forces are expressed using the wave properties of particles. My essay on the unification of forces includes force equations but discussion of the importance of ZPE is left for the book.

[deleted]

Dear John,

Indeed, we are limiting our efforts towards getting a deep understanding of the physical meaning of quantum mechanics, and to this end the ZPE has been shown to be crucial. The problem of the unification of forces is absolutely beyond our scope. It is undoubtedly an important problem, but we are afraid that it is impossible to solve it without first getting a better grasp of the quantum phenomenon.

Best wishes,

Luis, Ana and Andrea

Robert Oldershaw

I am still studying your paper, so excuse me if these questions are answered in parts I have not gotten to yet.

1. In your view what is the correct conceptual understanding of Psi-squared: probability function, something physical like mass or charge density, not even needed or wanted, other concept?

2. Does the ZPR approach help us to understand the double-slit experiment (especially in light of remarkable 'quantum non-demolition'-type 2-slit experiments reported recently in Nature?

[deleted]

Thanks for your interest in our work and for your pertinent questions that go to the heart of the matter. Indeed, the theory provides answers to both your questions.

1. As an integral part of the theory, it follows that the psi-squared function is a probability density, precisely in the sense of Born. It refers to a statistical distribution of particles in the configuration space, and in this regard it is something physical. The psi is, however, a mathematical entity that in addition contains information about the (mean local) motion.

2. The theory leads to an understanding of the double-slit experiment, but for lack of space we did not touch upon this subject in the essay. Essentially, the slits diffract the zero-point field and the motion of the particles is directly affected by this diffracted field. Hence particles with the appropriate momentum convey information about the diffraction pattern of the corresponding (diffracted) field modes. In Phys. Rev E 72, 066605 (2005) an exact calculation is presented of the pattern of the random zero-point field diffracted by a single slit, which shows the presence of scars, and in Physica E 42, 313 (2010) we make a very initial attempt to see how particles are affected by the field in the case of the double slit.

Ragards, L, A & A.

[deleted]

Dear Luis, Ana, and Andrea,

I enjoyed reading your clear exposition of the ideas of classical zero-point radiation leading to an understanding of quantum theory. Your characterization of the emergence of entanglement seems particularly nice, "But since the quantum description has no room for the background field, it appears as if an action at a distance were at work." Also, I was rereading parts of your "Quantum Dice" recently and wondered whether the information on stochastic optics has changed significantly.

Best wishes,

Tim

[deleted]

Dear Tim,

Thanks for your kind words, it is important for us to know that you appreciate our work - as we appreciate yours.

Of the four 'speculative suggestions' you mention in your nice essay, we have paid attention to three, obtaining some encouraging results. Entanglement is dealt with in several papers specifically for the two-particle case, fully in line with your point of view (see e.g. Physica E 42, 308 (2010) and Found. Phys. 41 (2011) 843-862). About the atomic line spectra, they turn out to be indeed due to sharp resonances, as you envision (some references are Found. Phys. 31, 1703 (2001) and Found. Phys. 39, 1240 (2009).) These two topics are dealt with at more length in Andrea's Ph D thesis.

As to your suggestion about particle diffraction, we fully agree with it. With J. Avendaño in Phys. Rev E 72, 066605 (2005) we present an exact calculation of the pattern of the random zero-point field diffracted by a single slit, which shows the presence of scars. In Physica E 42, 313 (2010) we make a very initial to attempt to see how particles are affected by the field diffracted by a double slit diffracted. It is interesting to note that the particles that are most diffracted are those that have a momentum equal to the momentum of the diffracted (and diffracting!) field mode. Unfortunately, due to both technical and personal reasons, this problem has not received due attention lately, but we hope to resume it in the near future.

Regarding your question about stochastic optics, Trevor Marshall and Emilio Santos, along with some younger colleagues, have continued to work on it, obtaining some interesting results, such as an explanation of some of the 'strictly quantum' phenomena of quantum optics as a consequence of entanglement with the zero-point field. We are sure that Emilio would be happy to give you more information.

All the best,

Luis, Ana and Andrea.