Is there any process called Decay of Information? If it is there, then how can we relate it to wave function collapse?
It depends on what you mean with "information". If you consider as information the different possible states for the particle in any particular Operator description, the the collapse implies destroying "that" information. In other hands, if information states for physical measurable properties, then collapse of the wave packet does not implies any destruction, but a creation of information: something that was previously hidden or just known in terms of probability, now becomes actual information.
Well I am no expert here, but the point is the conservation of probability.
You require that your probability is always bound by 1. So when a wave function collapses your previously smeared out probability becomes a single point in space time.
To my knowledge information is conserved. You neither destroy information nor do you suppress it.
Hope this helps
1. Roger Federer won 2018 Australian open.
2. Roger Federer won 2018 Australian open.
Sentence 1 destroyed information of Sentence 2.
Yes. The ``collapse'' is the result of the interaction of the system with an external field. The information that is lost is that contained in the relative phases of the superposition.
It seems that the community has forgotten why Schrödinger introduced the wave function to start with, and that the electron is an electromagnetic particle.
If the wave function of a bound electron is collapsed, account must be taken that it is a charged particle.
Since it is charged, collapsing the wave function instantly reveals the distance it is at with respect to its associated atomic nucleus, and just as instantly, its exact Coulomb force adiabatically induced carrying energy is revealed, whether or not its translational velocity can be expressed in this bound state.
So, far from losing information, information is gained, because from this location, its velocity and its vectorial direction of motion, if it was not inhibited in this least action equilibrium state, could be calculated with the highest precision:
http://file.scirp.org/Html/17-7503469_84158.htm
No. When any property of the electron is measured, the electron is found in an eigenstate of the operator that measures that property, that's all.
This is, also, an eigenstate of all operators that commute with the operator in question-but isn't an eigenstate of operators that don't. That's all that matters. So the electron remains in a superposition of states of the latter operators.
Just to mention that it is not eigenstates nor operators that are made to collide in high energy accelerator, but physically existing and localized charged elementary electromagnetic particles.
Such particles are eigenstates of the Hamiltonian operator (that's what definite value of the mass means) and of the Pauli-Lubanski operator (that's what definite spin means), since all particles are representations of the Poincaré group-a fact known at least since 1939 (Wigner).
They're, also, eigenstates of the electric charge operator, that commutes with the Hamiltonian and the Pauli-Lubanski operator-that's what ``definite electric charge'' means (not to forget the weak charge, if they're electrons).
That's what ``physically existing and localized electrically charged particle'' means.
So, yes, it's the evolution of such states that takes place in accelerators. This isn't anything new.
I was referring to the "electromagnetic" nature of the electron.
Feynman himself observed in 1964 that there was a disconnect between quantum mechanics and electromagnetism:
"There are difficulties associated with the ideas of Maxwell's theory which are not solved by and not directly associated with quantum mechanics...when electromagnetism is joined to quantum mechanics, the difficulties remain."
Feynman, R.P., Leighton, R.B. and Sands, M. (1964) The Feynman Lectures on Physics. Addison-Wesley, Vol. II, p. 28-1.
Wouldn't it be something new if this disconnect was resolved?
Once more: the electric charge operator and the weak charge operator commute with the Hamiltonian and the Pauli-Lubanski operator. No problem.
The issues that Feynman was referring to are completely different and don't have anything to do with the subject discussed, which is described in detail in vol. III on quantum mechanics, namely that a measurement results into a projection.
While in 1964 a consistent quantum theory of the electromagnetic and weak interactions hadn't been developed, this is the case now. The Standard Model (or Standard Theory of the electroweak and strong interactions) is a complete and consistent description of the physics of electrons, in particular.
And there's no point in quoting verbatim scientific texts-the ideas matter, not the words.
To my knowledge, electroweak and strong interaction also are inconsistent with electromagnetism, so they do not resolve the disconnect that Feynman referred to between quantum mechanics and electromagnetism.
As you say, the ideas matter.
Anyhow, the paper is now formally published and is being indexed. The community will eventually bear judgment.
It's simply wrong to state that the electroweak interactions (and the strong interactions...) are ``inconsistent with electromagnetism''! In fact, its simply nonsense.
It would be useful to actually know something about the subject, e.g. http://hep.ph.liv.ac.uk/~tara/lectures/sm_status.pdf
The content of papers is more significant than the fact that they're published. The latter is just sociology.
Fiction + fiction + fiction...
"Collapsing + wave-function + quantic information" only exist in the heads of the obedients of the Göttingen-København sect.
Nothing such exists in the physical world.
Only a predator or an opportunist animal can define "information".
If I write in red the word "blue", is it an information for a roe deer?
Conversely, very important olfactive informations for the deer are useless for us, quasi-anosmic animals.
"wave funtion" does not exist in the physical world, however it shares the same equation with a real wave, but not the same boundary conditions, nor the same time.
"Collapse" does not exists, but the absorbers do exist.
No laws exist in physics concerning an undefined "information".
It so happens that in electromagnetism, only one force is defined, which is the inverse square with distance Coulomb force stemming from Maxwell's first equation, which is Gauss's equation for the electric field.
Other than that, there is the magnetic inverse cube with distance interaction between magnetic fields, that was directly experimentally confirmed by Kotler et al. in 2014 between two electrons:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature13403.epdf?referrer_access_token=yoC6RXrPyxwvQviChYrG0tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PdPJ4geER1fKVR1YXH8GThqECstdb6e48mZm0qQo2OMX_XYURkzBSUZCrxM8VipvnG8FofxB39P4lc-1UIKEO1
As you say, it would be useful to actually know something about the subject. In the present case, electromagnetism.
(As you see, presumption of ignorance on the part of others is a very convincing argument.)
I am curious to see your demonstration of conformity of electroweak and strong interaction with Maxwell's equations.
No sociological references to general texts or powerpoint presentations would be significant.
Let's use Landauer’s principle, collapsing the wave-function (say by measurement) decreases the initially present information which is equivalent to erasing the initial ensemble. This would generate heat which is k_B x T x S(rho_i) per state where S(k ) = −tr[k ln k ] is the von Neumann entropy of k. So the min heat released = sum_i p_i k_B x T x S(rho_i) where p_i is probability linked to the ith member of ensemble.
To this end, Landauer’s principle helps resolve the situation via the erasure principle that any irreversible process involves work due to the entropy transfer from the degrees of freedom, coded as information entities outwards into the environment.
Ref: R. Landauer (1961): IBM J. Res. Dev. 5, 183
R. Landauer (1988): Nature 355, 779.
Dear Alagu,
Interesting idea, but it must be considered that "collapsing the wave-function" is only a mathematical operation, not a physical process, only meant to localize the electron at a given moment in time within its bound state resonance volume.
Since its energy level is adiabatically determined by the Coulomb force only as a function of the distance separating it from the nucleus, no energy loss can be involved in the process:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/on-adiabatic-processes-at-the-elementary-particle-level-2090-0902-1000177.pdf
Best Regards
André
In the frame of more advanced formalism, the geometric algebra one, compared to conventional quantum mechanics Hilbert space model, wave function is just an operator acting on observables and returning the result of measurement. Then it makes no sense to talk about “collapse”. If you really want to discover new things critically important for example for quantum computing implementation, switch to better mathematical model. Check, particularly, information on the web-site soiguine.com
In my opinion, from the practical point of view, collapse of the wave function is just as well understood from Einstein's viewpoint. (I know this is unpopular, but . . .) The wave function is usually interpreted as giving a probability distribution of where you might find the particle. After collapse, you know where it was because you saw it. You just bog yourself down with unnecessary problems by worrying about "information", whatever that is. As a local mathematician out it, if information is conserved, what happens when I burn an encyclopaedia? Again, all the answers that talk about operators, etc, talk about an interpretation. As it happens, I have an alternative interpretation (Guidance Waves) in which the wave function defines an energy field, and the probability of the electron being there follows the energy field, so it is sort of probability distribution. The reason for the energy field - from the simple Einstein wave and de Broglie wave equations, and require the phase velocity to equal the particle velocity so that when the particle gets to the two slits, the wave front also happens to be there. For some reason, only too many people don't seem to bother about that requirement.
You might be interested in Einstein's exact position with regard to QM:
" Ich zweifle gar nicht daran, dass die gegenwärtige Quanten-Theorie (genauer " Quanten-Mechanik ") die vollkommenste mit der Erfahrung vereinbare Theorie ist, solange man der Beschreibung die Begriffe materieller Punkt und potentielle Energie als elementare Begriffe zugrunde legt. Was ich aber an der Theorie unbefriedigend finde, stellt sich verschieden dar je nach der Interpretation, welche man der " ψ-Funktion " gibt. Jedenfalls aber steht am Anfang meiner Auffassung eine These, die von den meisten gegenwärtigen Theoretikern entschieden abgelehnt wird:
Es gibt so etwas wie den " realen Zustand " eines physikalischen Systems, was unabhängig von jeder Beobachtung oder Messung objektiv existiert und mit den Ausdrucksmitteln der Physik im Prinzip beschrieben werden kann.
Nun ist es kein Zweifel, dass die ψ-Funktion eine Art Beschreibung eines "realen Zustandes" ist. Die Frage ist aber, ob diese Beschreibung den realen Zustand vollständig oder unvollständig charakterisiert."
Translation:
" I have no doubt that quantum theory (more precisely "Quantum Mechanics") is the most perfect theory compatible with experience, inasmuch as its description is made to rest on the concept of the material point and potential energy as being elementary concepts. But what I find unsatisfactory in the theory resides elsewhere, in the interpretation that is given to the "ψ-function ". In any case, this is at the origin of my conception of a thesis which is categorically rejected by most current theoreticians:
There is something like "the real state" of a physical system, that exists objectively, independently of any observation or measure, and that can in principle be described by physics description means.
Now, there is no doubt that the ψ-function is a manner of description of a "real state". The question is then to determine if this description of a real state is complete or incomplete."
Source: Einstein A., Schrödinger E., Pauli W., Rosenfeld L., Born M., Joliot-Curie I. & F., Heisenberg W., Yukawa H., et al. (1953). Louis de Broglie, physicien et penseur. A Tribute to Louis de Broglie for his 60th birthday, each colleague providing one chapter, Einstein even collaborating to 2 distinct chapters, the complete text drafting a detailed overview of the state of knowledge in fundamental physics in 1952. Éditions Albin Michel, Paris.
Dear Wulf,
In the intro of the same reference Einstein makes quite clear also what he thought about de Broglie's discovery that stable states had to be resonance states:
"Ich will dem zusammen mit Frau B. Kaufman verfassten Beitrag zu diesem Bande einige Worte vorausschicken in der einzigen Sprache, in der ich mich mit einige Leichtigkeit ausdrücken kann. Es sind Worte der Entschuldigung. Sie sollen zeigen, warum ich, trotzdem ich De Broglie visionäre Entdeckung des inneren Zusammenhanges zwischen discreten Quantenzuständen und Resonanzzuständen in relativ jungen Jahren bewundernd miterlebt habe, doch unablässig nach einem Wege gesucht habe, das Quantenrätsel auf anderem Wege zu lösen oder doch wenigstens eine Lösung vorbereiten zu helfen."
Translation:
"I will begin my contribution prepared for this book in collaboration with Mrs. Kaufman with a few words in the only language in which I can express myself with any ease. They are words to express regret. They are meant to show why - although I observed admiringly in my years of relative youth the genial discovery by Louis de Broglie of the intimate relation between the discrete quantum states and resonance states - I nevertheless ceaselessly searched for some manner to resolve the enigma of quanta by some other means, or at least help in preparing such a solution."
I assure you that it takes no genius to figure out what Einstein meant and what Schrödinger meant to describe when he introduced the wave function to account for de Broglie's discovery that the electron stable states were least action resonance states.
Here is where it leads:
http://file.scirp.org/Html/17-7503469_84158.htm
Like them, I am convinced that transitions between stationary states are continuously progressive resonance processes, and if nobody tackles this issue before I become knowledgeable enough to do it myself, this is exactly where I am eventually headed, and not 10 nor 50 years from now.
Reality won't be different. Just described with more precision.
Best Regards
André
In answer to Wulf Rehder, yes, I may have been careless in wording - operators are not an interpretation - they are mathematical tools, but they are applied within a formalism, specifically in QM at present, what the Copenhagen Interpretation has evolved into.
Yes, what I call the Guidance Wave is like the pilot wave but there are two differences. The first I alluded to above - if you make the phase velocity equal the average particle velocity so as to have both at the slits more or less the same time, then you define an extra energy. Bohm's quantum potential is really undefined. The second difference arises from the fact that the Schrödinger equation is deterministic in ψ, and that from Euler's complex number theory, ψ becomes real at the antinodes. I attach physical significance to that. The question then becomes is this just another "how many angels dance on the head of a pin" type variation or is it useful? I believe it is because in the stationary state, specifically the chemical bond, it enables calculations to be made with little more than a hand-held calculator, the reason being the wave defines the energy. Currently, chemical bond calculations using the Copenhagen Interpretation requires massive computing time using programs with various validations to set constants, so in my view it is something worth considering.
Dear all,
While working during a long time in the field of Foundations of Quantum mechanics, one issue has been growing within my mind to near-certainty, viz. that `projection of the wave function' is an invention of a mathematician, unfortunately not being operationally satisfied by any measurement carried out within the physical domain of application of quantum mechanics.
As is well-known by now, von Neumann's projection postulate is not even satisfied by the Stern-Gerlach measurement, even though being presented in most textbooks of quantum mechanics as a paradigm of that postulate.
The cause of this is `lack of satisfaction of the postulate' is also rather evident: it is the interaction between the microscopic object and a measuring instrument, which is causing the former's state function to change.
In fact, there is only one qm measurement I know of, in which the state function is not changed in a measurement, viz. the 1935 EPR measurement,
the cause of satisfaction of the projection postulate being that there is no non-local interaction. Obtaining `knowledge on a microscopic object surpassing the knowledge we already had from preparing it' is impossible unless we disturb the object's state by means of a measuring instrument interacting with that object.
Decay of Information may certainly be a consequence of `interaction of microscopic object and measuring instrument'. This, however, is not related to any projection process.
See for an extended discussion of the measurement problem
my book on the Foundations of quantum mechanics, an empiricist approach (a prepublication version of which can be downloaded on the `Main publications' page of my website http://www.phys.tue.nl/ktn/Wim/muynck.htm ).
See also my Researchgate project ``On the crucial role of the measuring instrument in quantum mechanics''.
Dear professor Rehder,
On page 113 of the pre-publication version of my book I meant to say that the term `faithful measurement' was taken from Redhead's Incompleteness, nonlocality, and realism, its meaning being given by Redhead (I think) in the ‘Faithful measurement’ principle displayed immediately following the reference. The next sentence is intended to criticize this principle, which, in my view, is part of an untenable objectivistic-realist interpretation of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics. The main objective of my book is to discuss another interpretation, viz. an empiricist one, which looks upon quantum mechanical states and observables as mathematically representing preparation and measurement procedures.
In the RG project I referred to, the role of the measuring instrument (which object is not expllicitly dealt with in the theoretical literature (including textbooks)) is spelled out in more detail.
Although this seems impossible to people who do not understand electromagnetism, it is physically impossible for an electron in the ground state resonance orbital of the hydrogen atom to be adiabatically induced with less than approx 27.2 eV of energy by the Coulomb force whether we observe it or not.
So Willem's "faithful measurement" is the closest to describing physical reality that the community has come since the Copenhagen school of thought extinguished all attempts at research in the community with regard to physical reality.
It depends on what you mean with "information". If you consider as information the different possible states for the particle in any particular Operator description, the the collapse implies destroying "that" information. In other hands, if information states for physical measurable properties, then collapse of the wave packet does not implies any destruction, but a creation of information: something that was previously hidden or just known in terms of probability, now becomes actual information.
Dear Joeluis,
That was the point of my initial contribution. So total agreement.
The way I look at it is that suppose you have two states A and B, and you consider A going to B. You know a good deal about A because you have observed it (say in different atoms many times) and you know a good deal about B because you observe it, but the transition is discrete and you do not observe anything in between, and that inhibits classical thinking. Because you do not observe it, you cannot know exactly what happened, but you create mathematical relationships that you hope describe it and as many other transitions as you can. We do that with the wave function, but while we can describe it mathematically, it is a matter of opinion what it represents. Accordingly, what "collapse of the wave function" means depends on what you think the wave function means. Similarly, regarding "destroying information", it depends on what information you thought was associated with it. One view could be there is no information in the wave function because you cannot sense it; all you do is sense the events that you associate with it.
Dear Ian,
Let us look at physical reality to make your states A and B example more concrete.
We know a good deal about the hydrogen atom when the electron is stabilized in the ground state orbital (A). We also know a great deal about the ionized hydrogen atom (an isolated proton) (B).
But contrary to classical hypothesizing, that flatly states that the transition is discrete and that we do not observe anything in between, the transition is not discrete and we do observe quite a bit in between.
For the electron to escape from the hydrogen atom (state A) so that the hydrogen atom becomes ionized (state B), it is mandatory that an amount of energy equal to 13.6 eV be communicated to it either via convection or radiation, the latter case involving being hit by an electromagnetic photon of energy equal or superior to 13.6 eV. This energy forces the electron away from the proton (transition from state A to state B).
The hydrogen atom now being ionized (displaying a positive unit charge) will attract any electron (displaying a negative unit charge) that happens to be in the vicinity (The electromagnetic Coulomb law) which will cause the electron to be captured by the proton to stabilize at mean rest orbital distance in axial electromagnetic resonance state. As it is brutally stopped in its motion when being captured, its momentum energy (13.6 eV) that it adiabatically accumulated while accelerating towards the proton will be ejected as an electromagnetic photon.
This is not a matter of opinion. We have known and observed this for more than 1 century. This has been and can still be reproduced at will in high energy accelerators.
The wave function only describes the resonance volume that the electron visits while captive in axial resonance state in the ground state orbital.
There is no information to be destroyed. There is a physically existing hydrogen atom that can be in state A and state B and we understand perfectly why it transitions between these two states, and can reproduce it at will.
Dear Andre,
What I was thinking of when I wrote that is more in line with the electron was in a source at A, and action was made to send it to B, which was a detector, and we don't know what happened in between. The Schrödinger equation assigns a kinetic and potential energy to the states, and in principle in between as the wave function evolves, but we don't see that. We have no knowledge of what the wave function is doing, other than energy and momentum will be conserved.
The act of ejecting it was applied to state A to make it happen. For the hydrogen atom, it is the same. If you don't provide some number of ev, it stays in state A (the number will determine whether the electron got to an excited state or, with 13.6 ev, be ejected). My point was you can infer what the electron is doing, but apart from what you can observe, you can't know, so in something like the two slit experiment, you can't know what nominal trajectory the electron will take - you can only observe what it took.
Dear Ian,
But in physical reality, there is only one way for an electron to be stopped in its motion. It is for it to be captured in some allowed orbital in some atom. So if you send it towards a detector, it will end up being captured by one atom in the detector exactly in the same manner as it can be captured by an ionized hydrogen atom, and will release its acceleration momentum energy in the very same manner in the amount mandated by the distance that the capturing orbital lies at from this atomic nucleus.
There simply exists no other way for an electron to be captured in physical reality.
In fact, it cannot even be attracted towards the detector unless some atom in the detector is ionized positively, whatever trajectory it may have followed to get there.
Why should it matter so much that we don't know which specific trajectory any individual electron in the universe follows to get to the next ionized atom after having been ejected from some other atom?
There was no need for the wave function to calculate and predict with the highest precision the exact trajectories that each electron could be forced to follow to trace the images we could see on the cathode ray tubes of the TV screens we used to look at before the flat screens became popular.
It is a charged electromagnetic elementary particle. Consequently, it will follow the least action trajectory allowed by the electromagnetic equilibrium environment established all along the way from A to B, inadequate wave function representation notwithstanding.
The Schrödinger equation as currently defined is not completely synchronized with electromagnetism. This is why it cannot clearly represent the path followed by the electron going from point A to point B. Once this synchronization is correctly established, I have no doubt that the representation will become clearer.
The Schrödinger equation does not completely represent the energy induced in the electron by the Coulomb force because it is designed around the macroscopic concept of conservation of energy stemming from classical mechanics, which is invalid in electromagnetism. There is no "potential" energy in electromagnetism, because the Coulomb force can only induce kinetic energy in an adiabatic manner in charged particles.
The total complement of kinetic energy that an electron possesses at any given instant depends only on the distance between it and other surrounding charges, and will constantly vary as a function of this distance.
The current concepts of conservative momentum-Hamiltonian-Lagrangian are not properly synchronized with electromagnetism, which is what creates the confusion.
Dear Andre,
I must confess I don't understand your comment that there is no potential energy in electromagnetism because that would imply there is no Lagrangian and hence no action, or at least improper ones, which in turn would imply there are faults in our current quantum mechanics as well as electromagnetism. Since Schrödinger included a potential energy term in his equation, then there are problems there too. I presume I am missing something, because I doubt you really mean all that.
Similarly, to say energy is not conserved implies, from Nöther's theorem, there is no time symmetry. I can see how that can arise when we need General relativity, but at least for the non-relativistic case, I would have thought we could retain that?
Dear Ian,
I understand how difficult it is to conceptually overcome the very idea that "potential energy" simply does not exist in electromagnetism. I became completely aware of all aspects of this issue only very progressively and had quite a hard time seeing what this meant.
The use of the potential energy concept and of the classical principle of conservation remain quite useful for treating situations at our macroscopic level, but down at the submicroscopic charged electromagnetic elementary particles level, it is totally wrong and directly prevents complete understanding of this level.
Note that I did not write that energy "is not conserved". I wrote that energy is "adiabatically induced" by the Coulomb force, meaning that it can vary with distance between charges without being emitted or being gained from the environment. There is energy conservation not involving any notion of "potential energy" for all systems that have already stabilized in least action electromagnetic equilibrium states, which is most systems in nature.
The concept of "potential energy" not existing doesn't imply that the Lagrangian is outright wrong, just that it is incompletely synchronized with the manner in which the Coulomb force induces energy in electromagnetism. I think that it could be reformulated (or correctly "refocused", so to speak) to become completely synchronized with electromagnetism.
This perspective becomes easier to consider once the actual intrinsic electromagnetic properties of elementary charged particles are taken into account. Note that I don't have all the answers. A work in progress. I simply have been following the trail, and publishing as piece after piece fell in place.
At page 15 of the following paper for example, I try to put the problem I see with the momentum-Hamiltonian-Lagrangian in perspective:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/gravitation-quantum-mechanics-and-the-least-action-electromagneticequilibrium-states-2329-6542-1000152.pdf
There is no fault with electromagnetism although the actual inner electromagnetic structure of localized electromagnetic elementary particles still remains to be defined and integrated. This is discussed in the same paper.
As for quantum mechanics, it is still not completely harmonized with electromagnetism, as Feynman himself observed. It is not outright wrong, quite the contrary, but it is incomplete in not being completely harmonized with electromagnetism, since it attempts to describe the behavior of "electromagnetic particles" from a non-electromagnetic too general resonance perspective inherited from classical mechanics, which is itself not in complete sync with electromagnetism.
Remember that all the fundamental principles of classical mechanics were established before electric charges and the Coulomb force were discovered.
The issue of how Coulomb force adiabatic energy induction in charged particles causes requestioning of the traditional energy conservation perspective is put in perspective in this paper:
https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/on-adiabatic-processes-at-the-elementary-particle-level-2090-0902-1000177.pdf
OK, now I seen where you are coming from (or at least I think I do). I have thought loosely about the variation of distance between charges without emitting or gaining energy, and I put it down to an action principle which I don't fully know, and I left it at that. Perhaps lazy, but since what I am doing mainly revolves around stationary states (molecules) it could be put aside. Good luck with getting further.
Dear Ian,
You write: "I have thought loosely about the variation of distance between charges without emitting or gaining energy, and I put it down to an action principle which I don't fully know, and I left it at that."
This is precisely what I have been focusing on for the past 20 years. Indeed, I found that this has simply never been studied by anybody.
As I mention in the paper on adiabatic processes, just like there was no way for Newton to even imagine that the measurable mass of bodies could increase with velocities higher than were observable in his time, there was no way that experimentalists could have discovered from macroscopic experiments carried out at approximate sea level that the same gamma factor related mass increase growth curve also applies to masses axial changes of location due to this adiabatic factor.
For example, for a 1 kg mass accelerating in free fall from a 1 meter height at sea level, this natural adiabatic mass increase due to the charges making up the 1 kg mass coming nearer those in the Earth mass by 1 meter is 13 orders of magnitude smaller than the energy contained in 1 gram of mass. But at the submicroscopic level, it is already easily measurable and significant at electronic orbitals axial distances from nuclei and is critically important at nuclei level where it nears the asymptote limit.
This is what the traditional "potential-energy vs kinetic-energy" mutual conversion of the energy conservation principle embedded in the momentum/Hamiltonian/Lagrangian conceptually prevents noticing and exploring, and it is what needs to be fine tuned in quantum mechanics.
My view is that clarifying the electromagnetic resonance properties of charges that define the resonance volumes partly described by Schrödinger's wave function was a first step that needed to be made in this direction.
This was a very enjoyable discussion to read. Very clear and well stated. The original question had three or more flaws. The reason we ask questions is sometimes purposed only in order to learn to ask a better question . That may lead us to a better understanding of the principles of the Physical Landscape, and operations that occur, whether they are observed or not. First, "Collapse" is incorrect, "Transform or Translate or even Transcribe" must be specified, based on the operation. Secondly, we must consider if this transform or translation is unidirectional or reversible. Many of you pointed out that super-positional states are likely outcomes(stochastic models) but the determination of whether it becomes super-positional or not is specific to the precise condition of each set of environmental conditions, the thought experiment at hand, so no generalization can exist for this aspect of the question, which is too vague and non-specific. Third, and my favorite, is the concept of Information. Information is obtained from a system through the process of interpretation. It is both objective and subjective simultaneously. I believe what we wish to know involves a gain or loss of complexity, which is mathematically tied to the level of encoding that is structured and orderly, with readability that is non-volatile in nature (not destroyed or changed when observed). The question, in my mind now reads "Are there physical systems that can be transformed in terms of complexity, that maintain an encoding of information and be transcribed such that they conserve the original information (no loss) "? One only has to look at genetic models. But what we really want to know is whether the quantum models exhibit the same characteristics , as we desire to build technology such as quantum computing , and this goes to fundamental suitability for such physical systems. In order to obtain a system of order and complexity, one clearly must have a grasp on the precise models for the photon and electron, at a higher level of physical detail, and the correct cosmological constant for the transformation between these and other systematic operations. Nothing short of that will allow you to use such systems for computational purposes, informational compression algorithms, transport of information of complexity, or the encoding and decoding of entangled systems.
Mythology of "wave function" and "collapse"... Well, it is hegemonic, sure...
In 1916, Albert Einstein had proved that each photon is directional, and carries the momentum hν/c.
Quantentheorie der Strahlung (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) Mitteilungen der Physikalischen Gesellschaft, Zürich, 16, 47–62.
The problem is that in 1916, nobody had practice of the directivity of the antennas. After the radars of the 2nd world war, we have no more excuses.
Just compare the Wellington with the 1.7 m wavelength radar, and with 9.1 cm radar. https://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/technologies/article/postulats-herites-du-copenhaguisme-162467
An emitting atom has no means to provide a directivity. Only the transaction [Emitter-optical-medium-absorber] can do.
But wait a minute: According to the hegemonic Göttingen-copenhaguist mythology, as in power for 1927, suddenly at his fantasy, the cement-maker sends a 20 tons trailer cruising at random simultaneously on all the roads. Its "wave of probability" spreads on all the surface of Earth, and suddenly, Miracle! The driver finds a customer whose hopper has room for 20 tons cement. So is the miracle of the "collapse of the wave function" as usually taught by the hegemonic sect. So an emitting atom may wait more than 14 milliards years, even much more, to know in which direction is the recoil, and how many.
So is the Newtonian macro-time they teach to be a universal time...
"An emitting atom has no means to provide a directivity."
You do not know this.
If electrons are stabilized in axial resonance states within atoms they can provide directivity to the emitted photon.
This is what de Broglie discovered, which in turn is what induced Schrödinger to attempt describing this resonance state with a wave equation.
Do not hesitate to exhibit the final state and the initial state of the atom which illustrate your directional prophecy.
Dear Jacques,
It is not a "prophecy". It is what de Broglie and Schrödinger themselves wrote that they had discovered and wanted to explore.
I quote them with available sources mentioned in the intro of this paper that for the first time directly mathematically relates electromagnetism to the axial resonance states first partially mathematized by Schrödinger. Title "The Hydrogen Atom Fundamental Resonance States":
http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018042716061246.pdf
Best Regards
André
"révolution de l'électron sur son orbite". De Broglie believed that the electron was a corpuscle, far smaller than the "orbit", and that the electron and its Broglian wave were two distinct hypostases.
What Schrödinger proved two years and half later, was that the corpuscular hypothesis was weird. And it remains weird.
Yes, he believed that the electron was "localized". Confirmed by all electron scattering experiments.
His pilot wave simply turns out to be the electromagnetic carrying energy of the electron. Whence his wave-particle concept.
The corpuscular hypothesis is incompatible with all the radiocristallography, and with the Ramsauer-Townsend transparency, proved for 1921. It remains unproved, unnecessary, and extremely noxious.
No, not any scattering implies some corpuscles. Concerning the Compton scattering, look at the Dirac Nobel lecture. I had to re-discover it in 2011, and a copy is on RG.
I don't think anyone disagrees with wave-particle duality while the electron is in motion, but my understanding is that nobody has ever detected an electron other than as a point (or near point) which is a corpuscle. Am I wrong? Has someone some data?
Dear Ian,
You are absolutely right. In fact, "corpuscle" is just a "word" that simply means "permanently localized submicroscopic object". There is no instance where the electron was detected other than as if it was a "permanently localized submicroscopic object".
This "permanent localization" of the electron is confirmed by the only way that the energy making up its rest mass can be electromagnetic, that is, being made of an electric and a magnetic aspect, which is easily describable with a rather simple LC equation that makes sense only if the "particle" is "permanently localized".
Since the Marmet discovery confirms that the moving electron mass increment is a magnetic field that isn't part of the electron rest mass energy, then it can only be part of its carrying energy.
This means that its carrying energy is electromagnetic in nature, and can only be in fact what de Broglie intuitively named "a wave", that is its pilot-wave (its guiding wave... its carrying wave), that he could not completely identify then as electromagnetic, 80 years before Marmet's discovery.
This is what is at the origin of de Broglie's wave-particle concept.
Seems to me that this covers all angles.
Best Regards
André
@Ian Miller. Only the believers do not "disagree with wave particle-duality". But when the faith is lost, in front of the swindles ?
Only the obedient believers forget to study the properties of the absorbing reactions.
Experimental facts ?
Just look at the indifference of the perception of the colors and of the illuminance of the eye, toward astigmatism, or any other vergence defect of the eye.
Whichever the vergence defects, ALL the perceived photons had converged however onto a cis-retinal molecule, whose longer axis is only 1.8 nm. While our visible radiations are in the 380 - 780 nm range of wavelengths.
Not forgetting the existence of the interferential colors, anti-reflect coatings, quarter-wave plates... And the mere existence of the plane-polarized light , incompatible with the corpuscular ideations...
Dear Jacques,
The electromagnetic wavelength is not a measure of the width of the transverse EM oscillation, but of the distance that the electromagnetic quantum needs to travel in space at c for one cycle of its frequency to be completed.
The total complement of energy of a photon can only be continuously present and localized during the whole process othewise the intensity of the energy absorbed at any moment of the cycle could not account, as it does, for the intensity at the moment of emission.
André Michaud, you have already forgotten the behavior of the interferential colors and anti-reflect coatings at not so small angles. They give minorants to the width of the Fermat spindle of the photon at the position the coating or the feather is.
The handbook exists in french too: http://www.lulu.com/shop/jacques-lavau/microphysique-quantique-transactionnelle-principes-et-applications/paperback/product-23362834.html
At a grazing angle, the wing mirror of a teal is not more green, but magenta. Completely impossible with corpuscular things.
See also the Goos-Hänchen effect in plane polarization, Imbert-Fedorov in circular polarization
Dear Jacques,
I see no contradiction. There is only one way for a visible electromagnetic light photon to be emitted. It is by an electron de-exciting from a metastable orbital that it had previously reached in an atom after having been excited away from a more stable orbital closer to the nucleus.
Different frequencies emissions can only relate to different jump distances in either the same or different atoms.
Best Regards
André
The heirs of the Göttingen-København sect have not yet dared to deny the emitters. I do not understand why they stopped there, as they already have denied the absorbers.
Remember the parabola of the truck or the wagon, above.
Dear Jacques,
The heirs of the Göttingen-Copenhagen school have the same problem with progress that their originators had 90 years ago.
They are just as unable as the originator of this dead weight on the starting block school of thought to establish a logical mechanics of why the electron can move from one orbital to the next, which is what Schrödinger was so frustrated about in the 1950's:
"For it must have given to de Broglie the same shock and disappointment as it gave to me, when we learnt that a sort of transcendental, almost psychical interpretation of the wave phenomenon had been put forward, which was very soon hailed by the majority of leading theorists as the only one reconcilable with experiment, and which has now become the orthodox creed, accepted by almost everybody, with a few notable exceptions."
Ref: Erwin Schrödinger in Einstein, A., Schrödinger, E., Pauli, W., Rosenfeld, L., Born, M., Joliot-Curie, I. & F., Heisenberg, W., Yukawa, H., et al. (1953) "Louis de Broglie, physicien et penseur". 2. Éditions Albin Michel, Paris. P.16.
They are stuck with the phony idea that nature has incomprehensible different laws at the submicroscopic level than at our macroscopic level.
Progress will resume when this mechanics will be finally established.
Best Regards
André
In 1926, in the Physical Review version, Erwin Schrödinger gave the right version, alas burdened with two forgetfulness :
But he gave the real physical mechanism : emitted or absorbed, the photon is here the beat between the initial and the final state.
The same mechanism is valid for the synchrotron radiation, and for the Compton scattering.
Certainly also for the electron-phonon interaction, but I have not yet performed this study.
Dear Jacques,
I completely agree with you regarding Schrödinger's work. He and de Broglie really were on the right track.
What Schrödinger was missing in 1926 was clear understanding of inner resonance mechanics of the electron and of its carrying energy. It was not possible for him to completely integrate the relativistic frame, because it is only in 2003 that Paul Marmet understood the relation between the increase of the electron magnetic field with velocity and the simultaneous mass increase of the electron in motion that allows establishing this resonance mechanics.
Correlating this discovery by Marmet with de Broglie and Schrödinger's initial establishment of the wave function, is precisely what I undertook to clarify with my last paper:
http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JMP_2018042716061246.pdf
In this paper, I establish the inner electromagnetic resonance characteristics of the electron rest mass energy, those of its carrying energy, and those of free moving electromagnetic photons, in view of finally eventually developing the progressive mechanical explanation of the transitions between stationary states that they meant to establish.
This progressive mechanical explanation of the transitions for emission and absorption is what I now plan to work at, but I am at the very beginning of the process, and only part time; planning to review the required math and studying the established resonance emission processes to act as guidelines.
If you have the patience of studying my paper, I would be greatly interested in your opinion.
For your convenience, it also is available in French:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324823378_Les_etats_de_resonance_fondamentaux_de_l'atome_d'hydrogene
Best Regards
André
Does it not depend on whether the collapse occurs instantaneously or not? If wavefunction collapse does happen instantaneously, does it make sense to say that information was created or destroyed instantly? Doesn't that violate our relativistic understanding of information?
Can someone provide some insights into this? I used to think the collapse was instantaneous, but then information is not "revealed" instantly right?
You do not know the wave function has collapsed, if that is how you interpret what you see, until you see it. What you see is the particle is detected there, so what has happened before is a matter of theory, interpretation, so there is no real answer to that question.
"Wave function" and "collapse" are usually found in the handbooks and in the lecture rooms, but do not have any correspondant in the reality of the microphysical facts.
Nothing such exists in the physical facts.
"Detection" either do not exist in the physical laws, only in the sociological phenomenology of the copenhaguists physicists. They believe to be the navel of the world, though they came about fourteen milliards of years too late.
Yes. Wave-function collapsing is irreversible process.
It destroys information about system state before collapse.
Only an opportunist animal defines what is "information" for him or her.
There is no "information" in the physics laws, for any microphysical object. Only us pretend to find "information".
You confuse the common fiction with the reality.
The mythical "Wave-function" has no correspondant in the physical reality. Only in the collective psychology of the tribe.
You confuse "collapse" with the reality of the transfer from an emitter to an absorber.
Absorbers and transactions do exist. "Collapse" of a non-existing "Wave-function" does not exist either.
But the tribe still believes...
In addition to Jacques' point about what information is in relation to physical laws, what information do you think was lost prior to this alleged collapse of something that is argued not to exist physically?
One may distinguish three possible principles for a measure during the transfer of some quantic something:
1. An absorber triggers a changing in the state of the apparatus, to carry a signal to the recorder, or formerly a human operator (who counts the clicks of a Geiger counter, for instance). So is the majority case.
2. In a minority of cases, this is the change of state of the emitter which is probed by the apparatus.
3. And a very small minority: the crossed-through medium can do a “weak measurement”, only slightly perturbing the monitored process; eventually, the perturbation may be discretely compensated.
For instance, the coupled opsine-cis-retinal in our retinas acts in the first way. The separation of the trans-retinal induces a cascading bio-chemical amplification.
When the teachers of the tribe tell they "prepare a photon (or any Fermion, such as an electron) in a said state", they delude themselves. One can only prepare the optical impedances, but cannot predict when, nor which one of the potential emitters, will transfer a photon (or any Fermion) to which one of the potential absorbers. Monitoring the Dirac-de-Broglie ground noise is forever beyond possibilities. Theorem of the requisite variety, from Ashby.
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