Ordinary Analogues for Quantum Mechanics by Arjen Dijksman

Arjen

A very good essay with real physical content. One comment:

You write in your conclusion "We then noticed that there are actually classical experiments which give results analogous to the quantum world and ended up with an ordinary system with everyday objects that may be described with the help of quantum mechanical computational tools. The declared impossibility to give a deeper representation of single particle interference may therefore be seen, not as a scientifically proven impossibility, but rather as a cultural one, emerging probably from our physics education that prescribes that macroscopic objects be described with classical physics tools."

Whether we use classical tools or quantum tools to describe classical and/or quantum phenomena (assuming that distinction in phenomena makes sense & your essay gives reason to doubt that) we can only use the tools we have available. They are provided by our Logical / Mathematical methodologies that I refer to as formalisms.

Perhaps to paraphrase a well known Shakespearean saying (from Julius Caesar) - "the fault, dear Arjen, lies not in our culture but in our tools !" That in fact is the conclusion of my essay. The problem is in the tools, both classical and quantum. We need better ones. To get them we need to re-invent Logic & Maths. Once that is done, ultimately, everything will be easy.

Arjen,

Thanks for a very interesting essay. It is always good to learn about new analogs of quantum phenomena. I noticed that you were careful in your essay not to suggest that the needle analogy is what is "really going on" in quantum theory. In particular, I am doubtful that you could obtain a Bell inequality violation, since real waves cannot make their influence felt at a distance unlike quantum pilot waves. On a similar note, you did not have a guidance equation, such as the one that features in de Broglie-Bohm theory, and I imagine that if you did formulate one then it would have to be different from the quantum one.

As a final critique, I think that your discussion of de Broglie-Bohm theory and Bell violation around footnote 1 was a bit too vague. It makes it sound like de Broglie-Bohm is ruled out by Bell violation, which is untrue since the former is nonlocal. It is a common misconception, so care needs to be taken in discussing it accurately.

Overall though, a very thought provoking essay.

Matt Leifer

Hi dear all ,

I begin to encircle these ideas about Broglie-Bohm theory and Bell's inequ.

It's very interesting .

That said I have doubts about these hidden variables .If the ineq of Bell don't permit these local variables thus the interpretations are bizares .

If a pilot wave acts like a electric field and if we take these local variables and intrications more these inequalities ,thus some laws disappear and the imaginaies appears .In conclusion ,Everett and Bell are falses .

We can't pass the speed of light,the locality don't change never .The intrication furthermore is coorect for light .

Error of posting sorry ,I am continuing.

In fact ,these hidden variables don't exist ,simply I think.

About the intrications and the EPR paradox ,it's just a perception of things .

In all case it's far of us .

The synchronization is like a code ....and the rotations always are an important piece of the puzzle.

The topology and the locality more the waves and rotating spheres can improve the extrapolations .

An important point I think is to relativate our localities in fact ,in accepting our fundamental laws.

The relativity and the causality in the global locality and its local parameters ,separated but linked .How interpret our fundamentals ,perhaps only with pragmatism and rationality .

It's essential, it seems to me, to accept our limits .We are so far of our walls .Of course the variables are there but not hidden ,just different parameters under the same laws .

Sincerely

Best Regards

Steve

Dear Arjen,

I do not understand your conclusion:

"The declared impossibility to give a deeper representation of single particle interference may therefore be seen, not as a scientifically proven impossibility, but rather as a cultural one, emerging probably from our physics education that prescribes that macroscopic objects be described with classical physics tools."

It is well known that Bohm's quantum potential is non-relativistic. This shows itself for example when one tries to determine the "which path" information. In any water droplets experiments, the "pilot wave" does not instantaneously change when one slit is obstructed like in Bohm's theory, resulting in obvious different transitory behaviors compared with quantum mechanics. Because of this the macroscopic model is not exact. A partial model may be helpful for visualization, but it cannot be used to gain intuition where the model is not accurate.

So here is what I do not understand from your statement. You imply that the lack of intuition of QM is a cultural phenomenon because there are macroscopic models available. But the models are not exact and they do not stand up to closer inspection precisely where QM lacks macroscopic intuition. I hope you do not get offended, but to me it looks like those models (water droplets, needles) are like fool's gold which only look like the real thing from 10,000 feet, but in fact they do not produce genuine intuition about quantum mechanics. A genuine intuition would require (as a pre-requisite) a sharp crisp difference between classical and quantum mechanics, and not obfuscating their differences with partial models.

Florin

Arjen

I appreciate you being open minded enough to consider an alternative conclusion.

I agree tools are the products of culture; but I recognise two distinct cultures in science.

1 The empirical / experimental culture that by appllying scientific method to the real world produces undeniable - but sometimes inexplicable - truths about our universe. I call this the REASONABLE culture.

2. The Theoretical / Maths-Logic culture that by abstract Platoist thinking produces the tools (formalisms) we use to formulate the general laws of explanation. I call this the RATIONAL culture.

Some sciences are dominated by (1) experimental discovery, e.g Biology. Some are (now) dominated by (2) Advance Maths e.g. Physics.

In practice the two are intertwined to provide explanations. Your paper is an example of this. The experimentally determined facts of your experiments and QM cannot be denied. They are true. If we have problems explaining them I suspect we should take a closer look at the tools.

I hope you get time to read my stuff.

Dear Arjen,

Like Terry, I too appreciate you being open minded and not getting offended by my criticism. For me it was a very long and hard road to develop an intuition about QM and the trick was to learn in what way classical and QM are identical and in what way they are different. Unification of classical and QM in the same mathematical structure was first achieved by Segal, and second by Grgin and Petersen. Even now, FQXi is sponsoring someone to find yet another solution. The differences are much better known and many authors discovered them over time. The biggest peculiarity of QM is probably that the pure state space is continuous, while in classical mechanics it is discrete. Because of this the Born rule does not apply in classical physics and any classical model falls short on this point. So if your equations 4-7 may look similar with QM's equations, they are not enough without Born's rule.

Developing an intuition about QM is a very hard process. I can give examples of well known and widely respected physicists with hundreds of publications which do not really understand QM. I'll say that today no more than 100 people truly understand QM, with the real number being much lower. My contention is that superficial similarities between QM and classical mechanics give you a false sense of confidence about understanding QM.

Regards,

Florin

Hi all ,

It's the eternal problem between the reals and the imaginaries ,between our left and right brains ,between the Copenhagen Interpretation and the EPR ....

My only conclusion is that a balance is necessary to harmonise the extrapolations towards truths .

Pragamatism or imaginaries ...how can wehave a real physical system without real tools,it's impossible .

The hidden variables are few probables ,why our big equation should have different hidden laws .....the system is simple and complex thus it's not necessary .Our only hidden things are our walls of perception .

The empirism of Copernic and its friend Newton under discussions about realities .....and Borh and its sighs ,....even Heisenberg .....the conclusions aren't a play but are reals .....Feynman d have liked a lot .....the axioms don't change ,the formalisation must be fundamentals .

Thus like say some people ,I shut up and I calculate the rotating spheres ,it's a personal choice of course .

Your essay is relevant in its direction ,specific .

Good luck for the contest ,

Best Regards

Steve

Arjen,

I'm intrigued by your response, but I don't really see how you can realistically model Bell correlations in this way. According to QM, the form of the Bell correlations need not depend on the distance between the detectors, and indeed Bell experiments have been performed with photons over distances of many kilometers. To account for these correlations in the way you suggest, it would seem that we would need very long needles. Such needles could not be treated as rigid bodies, since if we were doing our Bell experiments well enough to evade the locality loophole then the timescale involved means that they would have to be treated relativistically, i.e. we would have to take into account the amount of time that a change to one end of the needle takes to propogate to the other end. I imagine that would break the Bell correlations.

On the other hand, if we do treat it as a rigid body then we have nonlocal influences, in which case it is not clear to me why this model is preferable to the standard Bohmian ontology.

Matt

Nice writing--but I am afraid this essay entirely misses the point. There have been many papers in the last 80 years which try to "explain" quantum behavior with classical phenomena.

However, the true success story of quantum mechanics is relativistic quantum field theory (QFT) and attempts, like this one, to classically "explain" quantum theory with double slit experiments and the like are, in my opinion, not more than irrelevant curiosities or side notes at high school or undergrad physics level.

I enjoyed reading your essay and I would like to direct your attention to my essay

contribution to the FXQi contest listed below. You will find that it has a connection

to your area of interest.

Your further comments would be appreciated.

Darryl Leiter Ph.D

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What Is Ultimately Possible in Physics Will Be Found Within An Observer-Participant Universe Where The Photon Carries The

Arrow of Time

by Darryl Jay Leiter, Ph.D

ABSTRACT

In confronting the challenge about what is ultimately possible in physics one must resolve three fundamental issues which occur at the interface between the microscopic and macroscopic levels of the universe: (1) the origin of the arrow of time in the universe; (2) the nature of macroscopic objective reality in the context quantum theory, and (3) an explanation for the emergence of macroscopic conscious minds in the universe. In response to this challenge we argue that the resolution of these three fundamental issues may be found within the paradigm of an observer-participant universe where the photon carries the arrow of timeAttachment #1: LeiterFQXi_ESSAY.pdf

Arjen,

I do believe it is a fact that "Developing an intuition about QM is a very hard process". And your attempt to remedy this is to be commended and is in the spirit of Galileo.

Developing an intuition about how to use "epicycles" to calculate the motion of the planets is a very hard process. But how can anyone deny that the earth is the center of the solar system. It is just so intuitive!

Your work is helping to get a better viewpoint on QM so that it will be understandable, and I do believe it will succeed.

Thanks,

Don L.

Arjen,

I finally found a free moment to read your essay. I enjoyed it. I have a couple of thoughts that came up while reading it.

1. For a really good pedagogical and heuristic derivation of the time-independent Schödinger equation that anyone with a knowledge of basic calculus can understand, see Tom Moore's Six Ideas That Shaped Physics: Unit Q. In my classes, I extend his derivation to the time-dependent version. Bohm's Quantum Theory (written before he got into pilot waves and such) also has some great discussions of waves in general, both classical and quantum. In short, the fact that your equation (4) looks like Schrödinger's equation doesn't surprise me because they both ultimately describe wave-like behavior which takes the same basic mathematical form whether or not it's quantum.

2. Regarding 'grandmothers, children, and barmaids' you haven't sold me on whether your approach is any easier to understand than any other. Just because it's got some classical features doesn't necessarily make it easier to understand. See those books I mentioned above. That being said, I do find your approach intriguing. The idea of finding classical analogues is something probably subconsciously done by a lot of people who teach introductory physics. Trying to teach quantum mechanics to freshman requires a good deal of creativity (I speak from experience).

3. Regarding quantum interference, it only seems strange to me in the particle context. In other words, in the wave/field context it seems perfectly natural and normal. It's when you start playing around with individual particles that it starts to deviate from something analogous to classical behavior. But, at least in regard to light, attempts to understand it in some kind of dual manner actually has origins much older than the quantum revolution. One could argue Huygens attempted something like it with his wavelet theory and one might even argue that there are hints of a pilot wave concept there.

Greetings Arjen.

This discussion is inseparable from the question of how space manifests as energy. How can you consider/understand/apply the following in keeping with your ideas/essay? For example, how could the below be applied to describing gravity in relation to the strong force?

To unify gravity and electromagnetism/light fundamentally and comprehensively, balancing/unifying scale by making gravity repulsive and attractive as electromagnetic energy/light is required. In demonstrating electromagnetic energy/light as gravitational space, the unification/balancing/inclusion of both invisible and visible space is central to balancing/unifying scale and attraction/repulsion in conjunction with space manifesting both gravititationally and electromagnetically. We can thus understand the wave-like properties of matter better as well.

Arjen, thanks for the reply. I agree that it is important to look for alternatives to the conventional interpretation of quantum theory. But I get the impression that, after all these years, those attempts essentially never went beyond the stage of the quantum theory of, say, 1926. Is this perhaps a sign that those attempts may be in vain?

In other words, if quantum theory had remained at a preliminary level before relativistic quantum field theory (QFT), it probably had never become more than a footnote in science history. Thus alternative theories have actually to be measured against the shining beauty and tremendous success of QFT.