Let me reformulate the question according to the Occam Razor: how far in the past must we go back in order to identify the critical sliding-doors moment?

I see that moment in the interpretation both of the Schroedinger equation and of the uncertainty principle.

Sofia,

"sliding doors" is the transparent metaphor of a famous american movie indicating events which basically occur by chance, instead of others having more or less the same chances.

In any case, do you know J.T.Cushing's wonderful book "Quantum Mechanics: historical contingency and the Copenhagen hegemony"?

I insist on what I said : the critical historical moment (the historical contingency!) was when the official interpretation both of the Schroedinger equation and of the uncertainty principle became hegemonic. I'm exactly replying to your question, but you are afraid of any answer, except the official (DEADLY serious) one.

Adriano

Sofia,

you not only ask questions, but want to impose the procrustean bed (another metaphor!) where any answer must be constricted.

Ok, then. Since you are speaking of wave-packets:

1) Which wave equation have you in mind, for each matter wave composing the wave-packet?

2) What will you reply to Born's objection (ATOMIC PHYSICS, page 92) that "such wave-packets come against insurmountable difficulties, since they will be very soon dissipated"?

Adriano

I'm not talking to Sofia, of course, who told good bye, but to the readers of goodwill.

Here is Born's full expression at page 92 of his ATOMIC PHYSICS, at the end of Sect. IV-4, titled

"Wave Nature of Matter. De Broglie's Theory":

"It tempts us to try to interpret a particle of matter as a wave-packet due to the superposition of a number of wave trains. This tentative interpretation, however, comes up against insurmountable difficulties, since a wave-packet of this kind is in general very soon dissipated".

I glimpse some connection with the plausibility of QM's current interpretation. Don't you?

Adriano Orefice

The many-particle Schrödinger equation works on configuration space. The configuration space for a n-particle system has 3n coordinates (in last consequence 3x the number of particles of the world). The

Many World Theory is not an interpretation, but a consequence of the many-particle Schrödinger equation.

Have a look at http://www.decoherence.de/ and contact Erich Joos for questions. H-D. Zeh, the main developer of the decoherence idea, unfortunately passed away recently.

Or look in a recent edition of the textbook Kurt Gottfried: Quantum mechanics, Fundamentals

Or have a look in my little 33 year old essay, I appended.

Though this stuff solves the wave-particle problem - it does not explain born's rule. So you can win some flowerpot.

Best regards

Friedrich Körner

Friedrich Otto Richard Körner,

Many World (MW) interpretation has nothing to do with the number of particles. Let's for simplicity speak of single-particle wave-function. It says that when the wave-function comprises more than one wave-packet, each wave-packet exists in a different world.

About the problem of Adriano Orefice with Born's worries:

It's true that a wave-packet representing an atom of small mass, disperses quickly. Then, the time-scale of the experiment should be small - i.e. small times-of-flight. That's all.

The field of atom interferometry is today widely investigated, which shows that Born's worries were solved. There are a lot of experiments with atoms - for instance, browse in the arXiv for the experiments of Zeilinger's team, of Marcus Arndt, for the recent experiments on atom interferometry of the team of Aspect, of Esslinger, of Pritchard, etc., etc., etc.

We don't live in Born's time. It's a good thing to read text-books, but it's not enough. A book may stick the reader in the times of the writer. I had a talk with a user who was stuck in de Broglie's period. People should also read current articles.

Translators needed!

I need the translation into plain English of the following sentence:

"Which matter-waves compose the wave-packet? I really don't know what you talk about. Which matter-waves compose the wave-packet if the wave-function is, at all, not ontic?".

It seems that in the Newspeak of the Orwellian State of Sofia Wechsler, a "wave-packet" is NOT a packet of waves (!!!), because "the wave-function is not ONTIC".

Now, it so happens that, requested "Which interpretation of QM seems to you the most plausible?", with a large (declared) freedom of answers, I'm wondering if the very concept of wave-packets is necessary. Perhaps a wave is no longer asked, in Newspeak's world, to be the solution of an ordinary-looking wave equation, "ontic" or not?

If QM is not logically satisfactory, Sofia Wechsler, the reason is not in the far branches of "current articles", but in the roots of its very beginning, which you appear to despise and ignore.

Sofia Wechsler: "Many World (MW) interpretation has nothing to do with the number of particles. Let's for simplicity speak of single-particle wave-function. It says that when the wave-function comprises more than one wave-packet, each wave-packet exists in a different world. "

That is wrong.

1.MW is not an interpretation, it is the outcome of the Many-Particle- Schrödinger-Equation. It does not work with a single particle.

2. Waves composed of superimposed wavepackets notice each other via interference, that means, that they are in the same world. Wave packets of different worlds in MW are many-particle- wave-packets in configuration space. They exist at different regions in configuration space. Therefore the interferences between these packages tend to disappear very, very fast and they never recognize each other, what means, that they are in "different worlds". All this is desribed in the essay, which I appended in my last answer. Please read.

Best regards

Friedrich Körner

None of those, and I have already often explained why.

None of these routine QM variants meets the experimental facts.

Experimental fact 1:

The conduction electrons collide with the phonons. And they collide with the dislocations, too.

Though the electrons are routinely said to be “punctual”, dimensionless corpuscles.

And the phonons are sampled on many atoms, and cannot transmute into something small.

Experimental fact 2:

The plane polarized light exists, and is used by the bees. So the light is never corpuscular, and never transmutes into something corpuscular.

Experimental fact 3:

The Ramsauer-Townsend resonant transparency exists, and is largely documented for 1921.

First, the projectiles were electrons, next different projectiles were used, with the same principle results. This transparency works because [electron] = [electron wave]. It is green cabbage and green cabbage (in French it is funnier: chou vert et vert chou).

Experimental fact 4:

The anti-reflect coatings work well, and continue to have some efficiency when the incidence angle differs notably from the normal, though the optimal transparency shifts to longer wavelengths. This property is used in photography and microscopy. It proves that a visible light photon has a notable width, at least comparable to its wavelength at the optical dioptre.

Experimental fact 5:

The quarter-wave plates work well, for transforming a plane-polarized light into circular, and vice-versa.

So any intermediate between purely circular polarization and purely plane polarization is always a valid polarization for a photon.

Experimental fact 6:

The interferential colors are all around us, and change with the incidence. With a grazing incidence, the wing mirror of the teals is seen as magenta, instead of green. It again gives a minorant to the width of a photon.

Experimental fact 7:

The Goos-Hänchen effect in plane polarization and the Imbert-Fedorov effect in circular polarization exist, and again give minorants to the width of a photon.

Experimental fact 8:

Daily, the radiocrystallography works well, even with electrons (experiments with neutrons are less frequent, and largely more expensive). Incompatible with a corpuscular theory. Linus Pauling and E. Bright Wilson Jr gave the example of their miserable failure, postulating a quantification of the linear momenta. Radiocrystallography uses the 1819 theory of physical optics, by Augustin Fresnel. The Scherrer law, giving the enlargement of the diffraction reflex by the smallness of the crystallites is daily used by mineralogists, and soil or public-works engineers. Only with waves…

Experimental fact 9:

Even when your eyes are astigmatic, or myopic, or hyperopic, you still see the same colors and the same illumination. The photons still converge on ONE couple opsin-cis-retinal, each. Impossible without causality flowing from the absorber to the optical medium (air).

Experimental fact 10:

The interferential astronomy on long bases works well. Impossible without bosonic interactions on the incoming electrons: bunching. The width of the Fermat spindle for each photon is largely compatible with this interaction on astronomical distances. However, their limited length poses a real problem: about one meter for a visible photon emitted by a hot star surface. This makes really difficult to find mates of travel, with such a short length each. Unless of a retrocausality from the transmitting vacuum to the individual emitters, synchronizing them?

Experimental fact 11:

The industrial apparatus for detecting and measuring the presence of carbon monoxide in the air by spectrographic absorption work very well, even for surveying from planes. The CO molecule captures the photon of the resonant frequency of 65.05 THz (4.608 µm wavelength), with an astonishing cross-section. But how the photon knows it has to converge on such a tiny molecule, 0.47 nm of longer axis?

Experimental fact 12:

The same question for any dye molecule, or any F-center on the surface of a solid. The absorbing molecule or site are all thousands of times smaller than the wavelength of the converging photon.

Experimental fact 13:

The same question for any spectral absorption. And they are many!

Experimental fact 14:

The Dirac-Schrödinger intrinsic frequency of the electron, 2mc²/h, has been measured at the ALS.

http://aflb.ensmp.fr/AFLB-331/aflb331m625.pdf

Experimental fact 15:

You age: Each year, the probability that you die in the next year increases.

But the atoms and their nuclei do not age: A 232 thorium nucleus keeps the same probability to decay in the next year, as when synthesized in the implosion of a supernova. An excited cloud of electrons around a nucleus does not age either: if its environment does not change, it keeps the same probability to de-energize. Well used in the 21 cm radioastronomy.

It seems that our familiar macro-time is far too big to penetrate an atom.

Experimental fact 16:

When two correlated photons are sent from the same emitter to two different absorbers, the laws of this transaction between five partners (one emitter, two absorbers, two intermediate media of propagation) never bother of the timing of the anxious physicist, in his/her Newtonian macro-time of the laboratory.

Experimental fact 17:

Shahriar S. Afshar has proved in 2001 and 2003 that interfering photons never transmute into something corpuscular; they always remain individual waves.

Afshar S. Violation of Bohr’s complementarity: one slit or both? AIP Conference Proceedings, 2006 v. 810, 294-–299.

Afshar S., Flores E., McDonalds K. F., Knoesel E. Paradox in wave-particle duality. Foundations of Physics, 2007, v. 37, 295-–305.

My conclusion: any anti-transactional theory is doomed.

Many disagree.

Your reasons for disagreeing, please? A way to save the now-hegemonic ideations?

Friedrich Otto Richard Körner,

It's not necessary to repeat that Many Worlds (MW) interpretations is applyable also to SINGLE PARTICLES. You mix the fact that in MULTI-PARTICLE wave-functions, each particle has a Hilbert spave of his own, with the idea of MW that at each measurement, the different products of states belong to different worlds. For instance, if the wave-function dscribes two particles, A and B

(1) |ψ> ~ |u>A |v>B + |u'>A |v'>B,

the MW interpretation suggests that the couple |u>A |v>B exists in one world, and |u'>A |v'>B in another world.

The idea of many worlds seems to me science fiction. HOWEVER, let's write the wave-function (1) according to the 2nd quantization,

(1) |ψ> ~ |1>u,A |1>v,B |0>u',A |0>v',B + |0>u,A |0>v,B |1>u',A |1>v',B .

The experiment seems to confirm this expression, i.e. if the detectors on the paths u and v fire, the detectors on the paths u' and v' behave as if they feel VACUUM. So, the question is, WHERE are in this case the wave-packets |1>u',A and |1>v',B , why don't they impress the detectors?

I repeat, the MW interpretation seems to me science fiction, but I fully understand its motivation, and I confess that I don't see a solution to the problem. This is why I asked my question.

Dear Sidney,

thank you very much for your suggested reference. Although, however, I read with interest "Robbert" Dijgraaf's elegant prose, his mystical "Landscape" (the Space of All Solutions) appears to be both arbitrary and frustrating: something like a smooth vertical wall offering no support for climbing. It reminds, in its present form, much more Theosophy, or Hinduism, than Science. The Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies is not new to these deeds.

As far as the new Dogma is concerned ("There Are No Laws of Physics") it appears to aim to the suppression of any personal understanding, more or less like the unfamous "shut up and calculate" of present-day Quantum Physics.

I still believe in Cushing's "Historical Contingency", with the support of Bacciagaluppi/Valentini's "Quantum Theory at the Crossroads".

I can be wrong, of course, and I remain open to further arguments.

Sofia,

no, I don't like wars. I like discussions.

You say:

True that a wave-packet representing an atom of small mass, disperses quickly. Then, the time-scale of the experiment should be small - i.e. small times-of-flight. That's all.

The field of atom interferometry is today widely investigated, which shows that Born's worries were solved. There are a lot of experiments with atoms - for instance, browse in the arXiv for the experiments of Zeilinger's team, of Marcus Arndt, for the recent experiments on atom interferometry of the team of Aspect, of Esslinger, of Pritchard, etc., etc., etc.

And I reply: I'm not interested on this or that experiment. What I say is that the use and abuse of wave-packets ought to be removed from Quantum Physics. This is why I entered the sacred space of your question.

You write: Did I say that QM is not logically satisfactory?

And then you write: QM leaves open questions to which we don't have answers.

Where is the difference, Sofia?

Adriano

Yes, Adriano,

There is a big difference. I appologize if my answer is not so nice: maybe we are not wise!!! What is QM guilty if we look at the equations and don't SEE what they tell us? We read as children, the symbols, and we pour equations. But we have to look what is behind the equations.

Now, your policy "I'm not interested on this or that experiment." is W R O N G !!!!!!!!!!!!!

READ experiments! You see, I have a friend who believes that he understands the superposition principle. But he does NOT understand. For estimating if we understand something, we have to compare our ideas with ALL the main experiments in QM. Many of these experiments are recent.

That's the situation! I know experiments that seem simply to lock horns, to contradict one another. But the Nature is NOT self-contradictory! Its subtility is huge and amazing. It's WE who are not wise enough for understanding the Nature. QM also is NOT wrong, you blame the wave-packets in vain. They are the solutions of the Schrodinger equation, s.t. they are as correct as this equation is correct.

To my displeasure, those experiments of which I told you, DON'T APPEAR in text-books, in old books of cellebrated physicists, etc. It's even more irritating that they are not tought in Universities today, because the teachers are not aware of them. So, it happens sometimes that I speak with people and they have no idea what I am talking about.

With best regards,

Sofia

Dear Wulf,

Thanks for your comments. They are interesting.

Here are my replies to part of them - I can refer only to the articles that I read.

You see, I read a good couple of counter-arguments to the ESSW experiment. All those that I read, did not refute the ESSW argument, but some modified versions of the ESSW experiment. Those "slight" modifications were essential, and rendered the experiment indeed inconclusive. I published here on RG a review of those criticizing articles, but after that I deleted it from reasons that I'll tell you in a private message. As to the article of Hiley from 2006, I am sorry, it is not convincing.

About articles of Fusseder, Goldstein, Zanghi (1993), Cunha (1998), I know nothing - I don't have them.

Now, regarding the Ghose experiment, I know Marchildon's complaints. But they discuss a certain configuration for Ghose's experiment. Here also there is a story: I proved by myself Ghose's experiment, while being unaware of his proof. I sent the manuscript for publication, and then, while browsing at random in the arXiv, I saw Ghose's articles. So, I withdrew my article from publication. Though I can tell you that my article was more general than Ghose's s.t. Marchildon's criticism wouldn't have been valid.

Now, please see, the greatest problem of the de Broglie-Bohm mechanics is the incompatibility with the relativity. The most dramatic blow on this interpretation is due to a famous article of Lucien Hardy

L. Hardy, “Quantum Mechanics, Local Realistic Theories, and Lorenz-Invariant Realistic Theories”, Phys. Rev. Lett. 68, no. 20, page 2981, (18 May 1992).

The article is not simple, and the anti-Bohm consequences are not obvious. I recommend my very short and clear article, here on RG

Article Hardy’s paradox made simple – what we infer from it?

I strongly recommend it, there is a clear explanation that when we consider moving frames, any predictions on trajectories are contradictory.

With kind regards,

Sofia

SDW: "It's not necessary to repeat that Many Worlds (MW) interpretations is applyable also to SINGLE PARTICLES." That is wrong. MW is not an interpretation, but a consequence of the many-particle (!) Schrödinger Equation (at least 2 particles). You can't apply the many-particle Schrödinger-Equation to a single particle as you can't get entanglement with only one particle.  Therefore if you think that MW is science fiction, then the many-particle Schrödinger Equation is science fiction too :-) When would you say, that the wave-function has split into different worlds?  I would say, when the different "worlds" will never again recognize each other, i.e. neither interact nor interfere until the end of the world.

Interference: Imagine a particle A in 2 states together with a pointer B made of 10^20 particles |ψ> ~( |u>A + |u'>A ) |v>B . After measurement the pointer has shifted for about 1 nanometer  to |v'> and  |ψ> ~ |u>A |v>B + |u'>A |v'>B (your equation 1) . If the overlap (interference)  of a single atom in |v>B  to  |v'>B is 0.1 of |v> then the total overlap is 0.1^(1020). Now it is very likely, that some phonons let these pointer states  |v>B  and  |v'>B make different movements, they will never again interfere (entropy --> decoherence). So you see: the more particles you use, the larger is the splitting-effect to the "worlds".

In the configuration space- picture a pointer- shift of one nanometer, yields a shift in configuration space SQRT[ 1020 (x2 - x1)2] = SQRT[ 1020 *10-9*2m] = 10m

Interaction:

With a glimpse at the many particle Schrödinger Equation you can see, that there are no interaction terms between different configuration space points. The interaction is inside a configuration space point.

Both effects together lead to parts of the wave function never again recognizing each other.

SDW: "WHERE are in this case the wave-packets |1>u',A and |1>v',B , why don't they impress the detectors?"

Actually they do,  in the second world |ψ> ~ |1>u,A |1>v,B |0>u',A |0>v',B + |0>u,A |0>v,B |1>u',A |1>v',B   -->   First world |1>u,A |1>v,B |0>u',A |0>v',B      Second world  |0>u,A |0>v,B |1>u',A |1>v',B

best regards

Friedrich Körner

Friedrich Otto Richard Körner,

I already answered you. So, good day to you,

Sofia

Dear Sofia,

when I had enough of Thermonuclear Physics, I went back to my youth idols: de Broglie and Schrödinger, under the influence of Bell’s passion for the Bohmian Theory. Both Standard Quantum Mechanics (SQM) and the Bohmian Theory (BT) turned out to make extensive use of wave-packets.

The BT, moreover, turned out to speak, well… not exactly of particle trajectories, as its legend sings, but of hydrodynamic probability flow lines.

Since I reminded what my third idol, Born, had written in his Atomic Physics, page 92, I wondered:

“Oh my! A wave-packet is unable to stick together. How can an electron (which has existed for 15 billion years) be represented by such a contraption? and what does a packet really represent?”.

Considering its structure, and reminding Bohm’s flow-lines, the answer was quite easy: a wave-packet doesn’t represent a physical observable, but a useful invention of human mind: an average.

And what about particles?

Here come 3 lines which you, Sofia, will not see, since you can’t see what you don’t like.

Particles (of definite energy) travel along exact trajectories, which are easily obtained from Schrödinger’s energy-dependent equation.

And what about the uncertainty principle? Next time (if any) I’ll tell you.

Best regards

Adriano

Sure, the official church Göttingen-København keeps its monopoly on all the lecture-rooms, on all the holy handbooks, on all the popularization, and on all the publications. Niels Bohr said that, and Richard Feynman also said: "Nobody really understands Quantum Mechanics". What they teach is "Shut up, and calculate", as the formalism is correct, but 100% undulatory, and 100 % deterministic, so fully contradicts their semantics, which is corpuscularist at the root.

George Bernard Shaw wrote: "I just have to assassinate five to six persons to leave London without any instrumentalist of worldwide level". Niels Bohr just had to demoralize two persons, Erwin Schrödinger in December 1926, and Louis de Broglie in October 1927, with similar results as explained by Shaw. Well-targeted scientific assassinations. Only P.A.M. Dirac mentions in his Nobel lecture (1933) the last crucial results obtained by Schrödinger about 1930, but not Schrödinger himself. I had to rediscover them myself in 2011.

Sure, lots of experimentum crucis exist. So the trick is to hide them from the students. For instance, the Ramsauer-Townsend resonant transparency, for 1921, confirmed hundreds of times since. Just corresponding to the anti-reflect coatings in photonic optics. The interferential colors too, the quarter-wave plates, and the anti-reflect coatings are daily experimentum crucis against any corpuscularism in photonic optics. The Goos-Hänchen effect in plane polarization and the Imbert-Fedorov effect in circular polarization are proofs too, but less commonly encountered. The practice of radiocrystallography is a daily proof against any corpusculism in photonic, electronic or neutronic optics. Only the Fresnel laws of 1819 are applicable. In solid state physics, there are plenty of proofs against any corpuscularism for the conduction electrons, for instance the electron-phonon interaction, which can never get small.

The Göttingen-København church denies the absorbers. I wonder why they did not deny the emitters, too. Why not, when in such a good route?

The QM preachers do not practice nor the solid state physics, nor radiocrystallography, nor spectrography. Only astrophysicists and analytical chemists practice spectrography on a daily basis. All the spectral absorptions, even the properties of our eyes, breach the Göttingen-København church believings. They all prove some causality is flowing from the absorber, denied by the hegemonic church.

The large-basis interferential astronomy proves the part of causality flowing from the bosonic interactions in the vacuum, to the emitters on the stars; in contradiction to the Newtonian macro-time preached by the preachers of the hegemonic Göttingen-København church.

In 1916, Albert Einstein proved that any photon in gas is perfectly directional. But in 1916 nobody had a practice of the radar antennas, and their directivity properties. Never an atom or molecule in a gas can have the required directional power. Only the transaction emitter-medium-absorber can. In 2018, we do not have more any excuse. According to the hegemonic church, an atom may have to wait up to more than fourteen milliard years to know in what direction is its recoil.

"If it is hegemonic, so it is right !". Huh?

@Wulf Rehder.

Now Byzance has fallen under the guns of Mehmed II, we may freely laugh at their byzantine theological disputes, such as how many angels can dance together on a pinpoint.

In a few decades, our descendants will freely laugh of the Göttingen-København superstitions and fairy tales, such as the Feynman's paths integral, and the "up to Jupiter and back".

Dear Jacques,

let me copy down here what A. F. Kracklauer wrote on Annales de la Fond. L. de Broglie 25, no 2 , pg.193-205 (2000):

"That nonlocality was not taken as a symptom of error, but celebrated as a profoundity, from the distance of future times will earn scorn".

Adriano,

with all the due respect, why should I care of your idols?

If you dislike wave-packets, it's your PERSONAL problem. Wave-packets are solutions of the Schrodinger equation. About Born's worries I answered you, and I am not going to repeat it again. Whoever lives in Born's time s.t. didn't yet hear of atom interferometry, I am sorry, I don't speak with ghosts.

About Bohm's mechanics, it failed because of its impossibility to cope with the theory of relativity. I recommended you to read my article "Hardy's paradox made simple" but you didn't.

Bottom line, my thread is not for tales on idols, people who live in other times than the 21th century, whimsical fellows who don't like to read experiments, etc. It's rigorous physics here, rigorous answers with rigorous justification are expected.

I invite you to leave my thread.

Feynman had an excuse: he was raised in a corpuscularist tribe.

The original paper of 1948, “Space-Time Approach to Non-Relativistic Quantum Mechanics” is at pages 321 to 341 of the gathering by Julian Schwinger “Selected Papers on Quantum Electrodynamics”, Dover Ed.

Bad news: the magnifying glasses are indispensable to read. It is reprinted really small.

The hypotheses Feynman used are not explicit, and are buried deep under the Lagrangian formalism. Indeed the merit of Taylor, Vokos and O'Meara is precise­ly to have them put in evidence; only then their unrealism is obvious.

Quotation:

This fundamental and underived postulate tells us that the frequency f with which the electron stopwatch rotates as it explores each path is given by the expression:

f = {kE - pE} over h.

Now this frequency, implicit by Feynman, explicit by these authors – thanks to them – is totally fictitious, immensely variable, and milliards of times slower than the real, intrinsic frequency. And Feynman, as internee in the group-think coming from the copenhaguists pack, strongly believed that the electron wave was only fictitious, just a magic trick for calculation; corpuscularists, they believed in corpuscles, just endowed with magic powers. Fictitious and unrealistic frequency for a supposed-fictitious wave. The result is that all the paths that Feynman and his readers could imagine were far too slack and un-stringent, are exorbitant from any physical law, and their calculation had to embrace gigantic spaces for a null result. Not surprising they had to struggle with heaps of diverging integrals, though condemned to give zero.

Walter Greiner. Quantum Mechanics, special chapters. Springer Verlag 1989. Chapitre 13.1 Action Functional in Classical Mechanics and Schrödinger's Wave Mechanics.

Greiner too does not explicit the fictitious frequency used by Feynman. Here are drawn wrigglings instead of trajectories. Figure 10.11.

This total unrealism flows from the initial choice by Feynman of a “fictitious wave” with fictitious frequency, where he confused phase velocity and group speed. But well, he was raised in a corpuscularist tribe… To Joseph Louis Lagrange, who worked in the 18th century, we will forgive to have elaborated a non-relativistic formalism. Richard Feynman is less forgivable to have returned to the Lagrangian formalism, therefore corpuscularist and non-relativist, which gave him a frequency and consequently Huyghens and Fermat constraints fully unrea­listic, so much in opposition to experience.

A consequence to have been raised by the corpuscularists.

@ Adriano Orefice.

I could not find this thesis.

A link please?

Which thesis are you speaking of, Jacques Lavau?

I cited a paper by A.F. Kracklauer, published on Les Annales de la Fondation L. de Broglie, 25, no.2, pg.293 (2000).

The link is

http://aflb.ensmp.fr/AFLB-252/aflb252p193.htm

Best regards

A.O.

Dear Sofia,

Your question is very interesting but not easy to answer it (at least for me). Quantum Mechanics is the most phenomenological physical theory than never was established and accepted. The spectra lines of the hydrogen found by Bohr were the guide. The quantization worked although problems with the classical radiation of an electric charge and so on were avoided. Very soon it was developed a Matrix Mechanics and a Wave Mechanics. In principle both formalisms seem to be quite different but the same Schrödinger proved that they were equivalent. This was mainly a different mathematical background that von Neumann stablished within a proper formalism.The problem with Quantum Mechanics is that there is a lack of understanding of the fundamental elements:

1. The wave function or the states are not physical objects by definition. A physical proof of this is the Aharonov-Bohm experiment.

2. Statistical interpretation of their square has a pure mathematical interpretation too,

3. The miracle is that the states have associated eigenvalues able to be measured.

Going directly to your question:

- MR. I agree with you. For me there is only one world by definition.

- GRW only come back to the problem of measurement in QM that it was avoided to be solved. Heisenberg interpreted his uncertainty principle as the impossibility to measure simultaneously complementary action operators. As you said this model is against relativity because it undergoes the wave function to a spontaneous collapse independently of the point where they are defined.

- dBB. I agree with you that this model follows with the idea of the hidden variables, but I think that is the best to recognize the limits of QM. The extra pilot wave dynamic equation in fact shows how QM is non local theory that must be enlarged for containing topological solutions besides the local ones provieded by Schrödinger equation.

@ Adriano Orefice.

Thank you for the link to the paper in pdf.

However I totally disagree whith his campaign against the non-locality.

The de-Broglie-Dirac ground noise is completely non-local.

The handshakes and transaction are fundamentally non-local.

There was no other issues.

@ Sydney Ernest Grimm

Each photon (= each individual wave) is directional. This restraints your fantasies.

Sydney Ernest Grimm. Never an individual wave, of light or a fermion, can transmute into a "dot". For instance, with incoherent sources in the visible, experiments of interference with long difference of paths had proven in the fifties or sixties, that the maximum length of coherence of each photon is about one meter. A "dot"? Huh?

In radiocrystallography of clays and silts, we extensively use the Scherrer Law to size the crystallites. Compatible with the laws of optics from Fresnel, 1819. Incompatible with your "dots".

The Mössbauer resonance of the 57Fe, used by Pound and Rebka, next by Pound and Snider : the photon length is in the 10 m - 20 m range. A "dot"? Huh?

And worse with a hydrogen maser in the 21 cm resonance. In the range of the distance from Moon to Earth.

Dear Sofia,

It is a good question that is difficult to give a definite answer. I have recently introduced a new quantum mechanics

Article Quantum Telegraph equation: New matter wave equation

hope you give me your feedback on it. Thank you in advance.

Arbab

Dear Daniel,

A. I don't understand your argument

"The wave function or the states are not physical objects by definition. A physical proof of this is the Aharonov-Bohm experiment."

Would you explain? What we know about the Aharonov-Bohm experiment is that the magnetic field has an effect there where it is NULL. Infact what has an effect in this experiment is the electro-magnetic potential. It is not a quantum effect, it can be understood by classical electro-magnetism.

So, please be kind and explain why do you think that the wave-function is not physica - let me use the usual word "ontic".

B. I think you have a typo error: it's not MR, but MW. Am I right?

C. Bohm's mechanics is non-relativistic and cannot be made relativistic. The Bohmian trajectories are incompatible with relativity - see

Article Hardy’s paradox made simple – what we infer from it?

It is a very small and easy to read article.

D. About GRW you touched an important point:

"As you said this model is against relativity because it undergoes the wave function to a spontaneous collapse independently of the point where they are defined."

No, I didn't say the model is against relativity, it is just non-relativistic, and efforts are done to extend it to cope with the relativity. But as you say, the spontaneous collapse has a flaw. I will say it more explicitly:

The great worth of this theory is that it shows that the spontaneous localization is extremely improbably if the studied quantum system consists in one or a few particles, however, it occurs instantaneously there where the quantum system interacts with a huge number of particles - i.e. in a detector.

Assume now a wave-function ( |u> + |v>), and on the path of each wave-packet a detector. Assume also that the path of |u> from the source to detector, is shorter than the path of |v> to detector. Then, since the wave-packet |u> is the first to reach a detector, the wave-function should always collapse on |u>. This is impossible, the collapse should be in equal proportion on |u> and on |v>.

With kind regards,

Sofia

Arbab I. Arbab. You have taken the worst of de Broglie, the duality, and dropped the essential : frequency, period, wavelength.

No hope !

Sofia,

Here are the last, unbelievable words that you addressed to me:

I invite you to leave my thread !

You publicly asked an interesting question on ReseachGate (RS):

“Which interpretation of QM seems to you the most plausible? The standard form of the quantum mechanics (SQM) is considered by many people unsatisfactory, as it leaves many open questions..”

The debate is taking place, and let me remember that RS is not your private property. You are receiving a flood of interesting answers, each one composed by a flood of words, which you correctly accept in "YOUR"(?!) shred.

But in my case, you want to shut me up!

My scientific answer to your question, however, is brief, clear and pertinent:

Of the two Schroedinger’s equations (the energy-dependent and the energy-independent one), the first one lends itsef to definite solutions, due to its energy assignment. It's the source of any exact and renowned quantum result.

The second one, on the other hand (because of its energy-independence) lends itself only to probabilistic, or average, solutions: wave-packets. This is important, of course, for statistical considerations. But an average quantity is NOT, in itself, an observable: it’s only a useful creation of our mind.

Most difficulties arise, in my opinion – didn’t you ask for our opinions?- when one claims that a wave-packet provides the most complete representation of a particle.

Should one exploit the full content of the first (energy-dependent) Schroedinger equation, as I’m showing and repeating, no paradox would arise. This is my motivated reply, which you are trying to objurgate, thus slaughtering the scientifc spirit of an open-minded discussion.

Dear Sofia,

First of all let me to say that I only use QM as a tool of my research and I'm not seriously aware of its difficulties as you, which you have one expertise in this field. I'll try to answer you directly to your interesting observations

A. I don't understand your argument

The wave-function is not gauge invariant and in the Aharonov-Bohm experiment you "control" the U(1) phase by means of the electromagnetic potential ( usually is employed the magnetic but it could also be done with the electric). Thus this tell us that the wave function or the states are not ontic objects. More important than the Aharonov-Bohm experiment is the Berry phase that I need to introduce to my students for measuring the topology of certain materials. The homotopy class \pi_1(S^1)=Z introduce a new quantization which is fundamental for understanding nowadays phenomena as integer or fractional quantum Hall effects. Macroscopic physical magnitudes as the electric conductivity appear quantized and what is more important, we can go to the lab and follow the experiments. Nowadays this is done not only for the charge but also for the spin SU(2) and many solutions as Majorana representations can be obtained physically.

B. I think you have a typo error: it's not MR, but MW. Am I right?

Of course, you are right, this was my mistake.

C. You take into account here an important point and you wrote in your paper:

Admitting “collapse at a distance”, i.e. that the measurement of one particle collapses the description of the other particle to a certain state, is at odds with the relativity theory.

Sofia, what you are telling here is that you need to control topological information that in fact is needed in QM. This is the point for me and this is obviously in contradiction with SR or GR because both are local theories. This is easy to say or write but very difficult and full of subtleties for enlarging the usual QM with these fields.

D. You didn't say that it is against relativity, that is true in words, but not what you showed when you takes into account in one interesting sentence:

But, this situation is impossible, because the wave-function (1)contains no coupling ››uu||.And since the wave-function treats on equal footing the two particles, and the theory of relativity treats on equal footing frames of coordinates

Finally, and sorry for this long post, I like models as dBB because they are clear enough for making a criticism and learn what in fact are our assumptions in QM. Hardy's article could go one step further and show that the hidden variables are not possible in QM thanks to the well defined concepts of the dBB model. This is one of the main challenges of the present QM, for instance, entanglement is used as one outcome of QM without trying to dis-entangle it in a new model which could allow us to take its real value, mathematically and physically.

Fantastic! It seems that somebody is recommending answers with my name. I hope that now they are in the good place and not changed. Thanks.

My dear Daniel,

No, I still do not understand your argument with Bohm-Aharonov. There is no need to tell you that proving that the wave-function is not ontic, is not a minor thing. People bring arguments, pro and against, but no rigorous proof.

You say

"The wave-function is not gauge invariant and in the Aharonov-Bohm experiment"

I agree. But then you say

"you "control" the U(1) phase by means of the electromagnetic potential . . . . . Thus this tell us that the wave function or the states are not ontic objects."

To me it tells something else! The fact that the wave-function is not gauge-invariant, but is sensitive to the magnetic potential, tells me that this potential is not just a mathematical tool, but has an observable effect. So, it is a realistic thing. How do you infer from this that the wave-function is not ontic? Please explain me your reasons.

I say indeed that admitting “collapse at a distance”, i.e. that the measurement of one particle collapses the description of the other particle to a certain state, is at odds with the relativity theory. I saw your reaction to my statement, but it is not connected to what I say. Daniel, did you read my article

Article Hardy’s paradox made simple – what we infer from it?

Do read it, I insist, it is one of the most helpful articles of mine. Then you'd understand me. It also shows that the Bohmian trajectories are impossible. It won't be tiresome, as it is very simple, short, and clear.

About the entry D, you say something from which I understand nothing. I quote:

"You didn't say that it is against relativity, that is true in words, but not what you showed when you takes into account in one interesting sentence:

But, this situation is impossible, because the wave-function (1) contains no coupling ››uu||.And since the wave-function treats on equal footing the two particles, and the theory of relativity treats on equal footing frames of coordinates"

Which coupling? Did I speak of couplings? And why do you need frames of coordinates? If there is one frame in which we have troubles, that's enough! You know this. But, again, I am not sure whether I understood your thoughts.

"Hardy's article could go one step further and show that the hidden variables are not possible in QM"

Oh, no!!! You are not aware of all the consequences of Hardy's article. All the world is aware! Daniel, PLEASE, read my article

Article Hardy’s paradox made simple – what we infer from it?

This article is THE END of the de Broglie-Bohm mechanics. My dear friend, the Bohmians acknowledge this.

With kind regards,

Sofia

Dear Sofia,

Let me repeat again that I'm an user of QM and not a maker. My opinion is out of the literature of Hardy or other researches in this field for whom I have my highest respect. Let me try to explain my basic points:

1. I don't know if ontic is the proper word, but a wave-function cannot be a physical object because it is not gauge invariant.

2. Aharonov-Bohm effect only shows that the phase indetermanecy of the wave-function can be related with the electromagnetic potentials. In certain circunstances both can help each other to decrease the degrees of freedom given by the gauge transformations. Behind this it is a very interesting and important topological behaviour.

3. Respect to your article, perhaps I didn't understand it properly, but I have just copied a sentance (end section 2, pag.3)

Sofia- But, this situation is impossible, because the wave-function (1)contains no coupling ››uu||.And since the wave-function treats on equal footing the two particles, and the theory of relativity treats on equal footing frames of coordinates, one cannot prefer the conclusionbyone frameover the other.

You speak about coupling and also coordinates. For me it is obvious that QM is not relativistic (by definition) and less the wave-function behaviour, but I tried to understand what were you arguing.

4. For me the limits that I find with QM are not related with what happens with the measurement or with the entanglement. The problem is to enlarge it as a physical theory for quantizing more physical quantities and for such aim the mathematical tool is the algebraic topology.

There is nothing to save in the paper "Hardy’s paradox made simple – what we infer from it?" as it collects wrong and surreptitious postulates.

The counter-proof is daily for everybody who has a vergence defect in at least one of his/her eyes: astigmatism, of myopia, or hyperopia: whatsoever the defect is corrected, let as is, or doubled, they still see the same colors and the same illumination. Though the cis-retinal molecule has 1.8 nm of longer axis.

Whichever the vergence defect is, the photon still converges on the photosensitive molecule. The experience may be repeated with any other dye molecule, in solution or in a polymer matrix, illuminated with astigmatic optics, and photometric device; in all cases, the resonating photons still converge on the dye molecules to be absorbed by. So are all the spectral absorptions.

Dear Jacques,

Don't be so crazy. Please, take care what you say because there are many people doing a serious work that deserve a real criticism but never a general opinion without taken the respect due. If you are not interested in this subject you can choose many different threads, but the minimum is to have a respect for the work done.

I have a good respect for the work made by Sofia and all that I can say is that my knowledge is in another part, but for me it is interesting to understand that basics of QM and I find it also difficult enough for sharing with the laymen as me. Sofia is a good teacher and pacient researcher.

Dear Daniel,

Sofia Said:

>

I agree with her. The vector potential is not only a math tool in order to determine something, but is an entity which makes a visibile difference...

Since it acts on the wave function also the wave function has to have an ontology.

@ Daniel Baldomir. Did I give here a list of the "Fifteen surreptitious, copenhaguist and corpuscularist postulates we do not more accept" ? Yes or no ?

Article Fifteen surreptitious, copenhaguist and corpuscularist postu...

If you find an error, please let us know.

Science differs from all the others systems of transmission of knowledge in that: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. The experts who are leading you may be wrong. We have to verify, by experiments.

@ Stefano Quattrini

The real waves share only one property with the fictitious "wave functions" : the equation of evolution.

And nothing else. Not the same boundary conditions, not the same "time", not the same physical nor the same semantic postulates. Not the same predictions, not the same range of applications.

Dear Stefano,

Thanks for confirming that the vector potential has observable effects. In electro-magnetism you are more professional than I.

Now, for being precise, the vector-potential (its integral along a given track) appears in the phase of the wave-function, as a parameter. Due to that, the wave-function can be controlled by the vector-potential in an observable way as proves the Aharonov-Bohm effect.

About the onticity of the wave-function I understand your words in the way that something real does not act on an equation on the paper, but also on something real. It's a smart remark.

The vector potential or other electromagnetic field is not one physical observable at all !!! The same happens with the wave-function or the quantum states of QM.

Sorry, the proper phrase is:

The vector potential or other electromagnetic potential is not one physical observable at all !!! The same happens with the wave-function or the quantum states of QM.

Daniel Baldomir. You may edit your messages, to correct an error.

Dear Jacques,

Thank you for your kind help, but I have not problems to show the error and where it is. At difference of what happens in non-Abelian fields (only covariant under the gauge group) the electromagnetic are gauge invariant and therefore invariant. This leads to one immediate geometrical interpretation as curvatures where the potentials are connections.

Daniel, my friend,

"The vector potential or other electromagnetic field is not one physical observable at all !!! The same happens with the wave-function or the quantum states of QM."

What you want to say with this? Potentials are taken in consideration in the Schrodinger equation, and they shape the wave-function. The potentials don't belong to the category of observable, but to the category of parameters in the Schrodinger equation, in the same way as is, for instance, the potential energy in an electric field.

If somebody wishes to transform the properties of a field into a quantum observables, he should go down to the field quanta - e.g. photons, or other particles.

The wave-function does not have quanta. It is a description of a quantum system. By analogy, the Newtonian trajectories are not objects, but describe the evolution of classical objects.

This is why there is a polemic about the onticity of the wave-function. The polemic is around the question whether the quantum system IS the same thing as its wave-function. But, if it is not, we have at least the motivation to think that QM has a substructure.

The de Broglie-Bohm mechanics assumes such a substructure. The GRW does not. But, as I said, dBB was proved as incompatible with the relativity, as a consequence of Hardy's paradox - the Bohmians themselves acknowledges this

Berndl K., Dürr D., Goldstein S., and Zanghì N., "EPR-Bell Nonlocality, Lorentz Invariance, and Bohmian Quantum Theory", quant-ph/9510.027 .

But, I repeat, it's simpler to read my article on Hardy's paradox.

Kind regards!

@Sofia: "- dBB (de Broglie-Bohm interpretation). This interpretation was proved as disagreeing with the experiment – see the ESSW experiment, and the Ghose experiment."

You should not keep making statements that have already been pointed out as being incorrect to you.

The authors of ESSW themselves say that "Nowhere did we claim that BM makes predictions that differ from those of quantum mechanics." [1] So their argument against Bohmian mechanics is not an argument based on disagreement with experiment. You failed to understand that but you should at least accept that the authors themselves know what they claim to have shown and what they did not.

Moreover, there is not only the first paper against Ghose mentioned by you, which is not well written indeed. There are additional refutations and I myself have demonstrated in various answers to you that Ghose's argument indeed is wrong. Bohmian mechanics captures spatial correlations of arbitrarily high order and has no problems with bosons whatsoever (see my science education project where I show this explicitly for the Hong-Ou-Mandel experiment, i.e., second-order correlations). It really is a puzzle to me how you keep citing a result that has been demonstrated to you to be incorrect, even though sufficient mathematical details have been given.

[1] B.-G. Englert, M. O. Scully, G. Süssmann, and H. Walther, Reply to Comment on "Surrealistic Bohm Trajectories" Z. Naturforschung 48a, 1263-1264 (1993)

@Quattrini:

"Dear Daniel,

Sofia Said:

>

I agree with her. The vector potential is not only a math tool in order to determine something, but is an entity which makes a visibile difference...

Since it acts on the wave function also the wave function has to have an ontology."

There are two statements in this that I would contest, one by Sofia, one by you. Both are based on imprecise thinking.

The first is that the sensitivity of the wave function to the vector potential should prove that the potential is not just a mathematical tool. This is a bizarre statement. The vector potential affects the -- unobservable -- phase of the wave function. How whold this make the vector potential more than a mathematical tool? Whenever phase differences -- which are observable -- are affected by the vector potential, a closed loop integration over the vector potential is involved which can instead be expressed via the flux of the magnetic field through the loop. That is, the gauge dependent part of the vector potential never contributes to observable quantities and the gauge independent part is expressible by the field itself. Therefore, no physical reality for the vector potential, no elevation beyond the status as a mathematical tool.

The second statement then is yours, the -- hasty -- conclusion that if the vector potential affects the wave function, the latter must have an ontology. This is simply a logical non-sequitur. In classical mechanics, we have master equations, describing population probability distributions. If the particles are charged, their probability distribution will certainly be affected by an electric field, a totally physical field. Nevertheless, nobody believes the probability distribution to become ontological due to the fact that ontological fields affect it. Is the probability for a die to display a six after having been thrown by you an ontological entity just because it is influenced by your hand throwing it (your hand certainly being ontological)?

You see, non-ontological entities can easily be acted on by ontological ones. It is rathe the converse that would be a surprise.

Klaus,

I have my own eyes, and own mind. I modestly remind you that I am a real-time-systems debugger. It's I who examines a work and decides, I don't plagiarize the opinions of others, not even of the authors. By the way, ESSW made some mistakes - but correctable. There was a review of mine on RG, "The wonders of the quantum potential" but I deleted it after Hiley told me that they cannot withdraw a certain article (you know all the story.)

I should have modified my article - i.e. replace in the review Hiley's article with their new article on which I still had criticism. But I thought that as wasted time.

As to the story with Ghose's experiment, I told you that I have a better version of my own. Indeed, I should pblish my version, Marchildon's objections are not valid for it.

However, look at

Berndl K., Dürr D., Goldstein S., and Zanghì N., "EPR-Bell Nonlocality, Lorentz Invariance, and Bohmian Quantum Theory", quant-ph/9510.027 .

The Bohmians themselves acknowledged that a consequence of Hardy's paradox is that the dBB mechanics is incompatible with the relativity. The same thing I proved in my "Hardy's paradox made simple", however, much more simply.

So, why should I waste time? What I covet (VERY MUCH) is to understand how works the wave-function. If the dBB failed, I go on. If you have time, YOU stay with dBB.

To tell you frankly, I have a terrible problem with the Many Worlds. I think it as science fiction, and though, I have a strong impression that in which-way experiments, the wave-function behaves as if our 3D space is many-fold. I am discussing this with other people, but it's not a simple issue.

About the GRW, I dislike the ad-hoc potential and localization operator, and so do other researchers. I suspect other problems too. I told Ghirardi that a heavy issue to which they didn't give an answer, is whether quantum correlations imply influence from future. Well, I cannot tell you everything openly.

As I think that people forgets very basic concepts, I introduce you a link just for remembering what at least wanted to say

https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/qm/Quantum/node35.html

Dear Daniel, and everybody else,

Just to remind: this thread is about interpretations of QM. Please concentrate your attention on the question and don't transform this thread into a discussion of something else. My desire is to clarify what I asked. People interested in my question should see opinions on it, not other things.

Who is interesting to discuss something else please be kind and open a different thread.

To discuss the onticity (yes/no) of the wave-function is relevant to the question, and wellcome. It is a very important issue. But I wouldn't want a discussion on electromagnetism. Please be understanding.

With a lot of kind regards, and thanks in advance,

Sofia

Dear Sofia,

Have a good day and I wish you the best with your interesting thread.

Daniel

@Klaus Kassner vs. @Stefano Quattrini:

Of course Klaus fails to understand what said Stefano, because Klaus modified the experiment under discussion.

Klaus: "The first (statement) is that the sensitivity of the wave function to the vector potential should prove that the potential is not just a mathematical tool. This is a bizarre statement. . . . . Whenever phase differences -- which are observable -- are affected by the vector potential, a closed loop integration over the vector potential is involved which can instead be expressed via the flux of the magnetic field through the loop."

Klaus, before criticizing, would you kindly read the experiment?

We don't measure closed loops, but halves of loops. The wave-function is a superposition of two wave-packets. In the phase of each wave-packet appears a line-integral along half the loop, i.e. ∫a b A dx1, and ∫a b A dx2. a is a point in the region where the wave-packet is split into two, and b is a point in the interference region of the two wave-packets. x1 describes a half-loop going around the solenoid on one side, and x2 describes the half-loop around the solenoid on the other side. Thus, no line crosses the solenoid, s.t. along each line B=0. However, A which appears in the integrals is ≠0.

So, again, you are not allowed to modify the experiment.

". . . . . . the -- hasty -- conclusion that if the vector potential affects the wave function, the latter must have an ontology. This is simply a logical non-sequitur. . . . . nobody believes the probability distribution to become ontological due to the fact that ontological fields affect it . . . ."

The wave-function is much more than a probability distribution. It is our best representation of what travels in the apparatus, including the physical properties which act on the material in the detector (observables' values) and the amplitudes which have a role in interference. What travels in our apparatus knocks at the detectors windows and produces results of measurements. It is not ruled by equations on paper.

Klaus, physics is first of all phenomenology.

Dear friends,

The father of Wave Mechanics, Louis de Broglie, was threatened in 1929 with a different version of today's "shut up and calculate". He was told, in practice: "shut up and put the Nobel in your pocket" (see Louis de Broglie: un itinéraire scientifique - textes réunis et présentés par G. Lochak, Ed. La Découverte). He was so scared, indeed, that he was silent for 25 years.

What blasphemy had he uttered? At the 1927 Solvay Conference he had dared to say (see Bacciagaluppi/Valentini, Quantum Theory at the Crossroads):

"It appears to us certain that if one wants to physically represent the evolution of a system of N corpuscles, one must consider the propagation of N waves in space, each of the N propagations being determined by the action of the N-1 corpuscles connected to other waves.(...) Contrary to what happens for a single material point, it does not appear easy to find a wave ψ that would define the motion of the system taking Relativity into account".

Quantum Physics set off therefore, because of his silencing, in the present day direction, splitting moreover into the twin Standard and Bohmian quantum approaches, with their load of paradoxes, including the ones we are speaking of.

See also the direct violence of Niels Bohr against Erwin Schrödinger in December 1926, and against Louis de Broglie in October 1927.

http://citoyens.deontolog.org/index.php/topic,1141.0.html

The habits of violence of the Göttingen-København sect against the remaining of the world are still usual now.

The physicists are territorial animals like the others: rats and dishonest like the others as long as they do not feel supervised. The institutional Superego of deontology of knowledge only intervenes in rare cases, only when they fear the regard of the general public whose taxes pay their wages and their laboratories.

Jacques Lavau,

my thread is not a column of gossip about intrigues, personal affairs, etc. Neither is it an arena for your personal war against the great physicists from Copenhagen. Do your war in YOUR threads.

I don't admit accusations against scientific institutions and forums. If you have specific evidence on imoral behavior, there exist police and courts of justice. By the way, all the topics you enumarate as hidden from the public, appear in teaching programs of universities, and/or in scientific and technical publications. Read articles!

I require from you to erase all the accusations from my thread. Place them in YOUR threads. My thread is exclusively about what asks my question, NOTHING ELSE.

If you continue to make use of my thread for spreading calumies and making personal wars, I will be forced to require you to leave my thread!

Sofia,

the historical facts mentioned byJacques Lavau and myself are mere (and well known) historical reality elements – no gossip.

According to Hardy, we cannot find a logically coherent interpretation of a quantum system in terms of reality elements obtained from experimental results. “It’s a sin”, you wrote, “that Hardy’s paradox is not introduced in University courses on QM”.

Well, it’s also a sin that those historical reality element are not introduced in University courses.

Would Hardy’s paradox have arised in different historical conditions, under different logical stresses and a different freedom of speech?

Adriano,

"According to Hardy, we cannot find a logically coherent interpretation of a quantum system in terms of reality elements obtained from experimental results. “It’s a sin”, you wrote, “that Hardy’s paradox is not introduced in University courses on QM”.

Well, it’s also a sin that those historical reality element are not introduced in University courses."

Adriano, this is "wording". I speak in rigorous proofs, not in phrases. I can answer you, ONLY if you can point to a mistake in my article on Hardy's paradox. (By the way, I recommend MY article and not Hardy's article, because my one is extremely simple, while Hardy's one is quite complicated.) So, TRY to find a mistake in the proof. Inspect each equation and equation, each conclusion!

All the quantum world, the best minds, tried to find a flaw in Hardy's proof. Nobody found. That means, we have to accept that there are no particles and trajectories as a substructure of QM, and that whatever we have is the wave-function, and that's ALL. This is, by the way, the position of the Standard QM, or, the Copenhagen interpretation (CI) says.

Since people need answers to questions that they believe that CI doesn't provide an answer - I repeat, so they believe - they propose interpretations. All these interpretations are rigorous models, accompanied by mathematical elaboration. But, they supplement CI with additional assumptions. So did the Bohmian mechanics, and it was proved that the additional assumptions lead to disagreement with the experiment. It may be that the other interpretations will have the same fate. In my article

Research Can the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber theory be transformed into a r...

To other things you said, I can answer only by private messages. My thread is about what my questions asks - NOYHING ELSE. Even from my best friends I asked not to depart from the question. Whoever wishes to discuss other things, may open threads of his/her own.

Sofia,

I fully agree with what you say: you are the zealous defender of Standard QM, according which we have to accept that there are no particles and trajectories as a substructure of QM.

What a suicidal conclusion! And your letter, indeed, is your Masada (remember the dramatic end of the siege of 74 CE? ).

Then Wave Mechanics shall have the possibility, at last, to dismiss QM and go back to Einstein, de Broglie and Schroedinger.

The best reply to your original question.

@Adriano: "I fully agree with what you say: you are the zealous defender of Standard QM, according which we have to accept that there are no particles and trajectories as a substructure of QM.

What a suicidal conclusion! And your letter, indeed, is your Masada (remember the dramatic end of the siege of 74 CE? )."

Did you do what I told you, i.e. to find a mistake in Hardy's paradox? Don't you understand the word PROOF? If you don't know that theoretical physics goes with RIGOROUS PROOFS, I am sorry, but I am busy.

What you serve me lamentations, "suicide", "Massadah", etc.? It's physics here, a theory is either correct, or wrong. And that goes with rigorous proofs. Do you have a rigorous proof, I will "listen", if you don't have, I am sorry, my time is unbearably short.

Hardy ? "Click, click, collapse, wave-function, which path, and then, and after...", and Me, Myself and I, and My macro-time in My frame...

Far too many surreptitious and unjustifiable postulates ==> direct to the garbage can.

A photon travels at null proper time. For it, emission and absorption are simultaneous. So the causality for a photon flows equally from the absorber as from the emitter.

Too simple and too relativist for the anti-relativist sect (anti-Einstein, anti-Broglie, anti-Schrödinger, anti-Fourier, anti-Dirac, anti-Ramsauer, anti-Townsend, anti-waves, anti-frequency, anti-period, anti-Zitterbewegung, anti-Kirchhoff, anti-Maxwell, anti-Fresnel, anti-Young, anti-Fermat, anti-Huyghens, so on)...

Lavau,

Get out of my thread!

You have no understanding on Hardy's paradox. The treatment is not in the rest-frame of a photon, no such frame exists. You didn't even read it, you have no idea of the treatment, but you throw insults. And it is not based on surreptitious postulates, but on the postulates of QM, which you hate instead of studying and understanding. Nobody is interested in you furibund hatred. All the quantum community applauded Hardy's work. But if you hold that it is worthy of garbage can, PROVE! Are you able to prove, have you any idea of the quantum formlism? If you don't, take your insults and get out of my threads. You NEVER provided a proof, only calumnies, incoherent phrases, hatred, insults.

PROVE, or get out of my thread!

You can't impose yourself on me. Annoying, insulting, etc. are violence! I don't want to have to do with you - do you understand? Learn QM if you want to talk with me, otherwise you are just an annoyer.

If you insist in annoying and insulting me, I am going to report all your caluminies against institutions, your war, insults, and hatred against scientists, etc., to authorities. Let them deal with you according to the LAW.

Get out of my thread, and never show yourself in my threads!

Sofia,

stay calm. There is no mistake in your brilliant theorem.

"There are no particles and trajectories as a substructure of QM".

The Wunderkammer of scientific monstruosities is now dominated by the EPR paradox and by the Hardy-Wechsler paradox. That these paradoxes were not taken as symptoms of error, but celebrated as profoundities, from the distance of future times will earn scorn.

Adriano

Bravo, Adriano, Einstein would get scorn? You are also one unable to provide proofs to his claims, just writes calumnies and insults. I advise you to say your opinions in YOUR threads, not mine, because after such a declaration I'll ignore them.

Do not cheat, Sofia.

Einstein presented his EPR paradox AGAINST, and not in favour, of SQM!

Concerning calumnies and insults, you're also lying. What are you inventing?!

And concerning "your" thread, you have not the private property of ResearchGate.

Adriano

In relation with the GRW interpretation, I saw in one of the articles trying to extend this interpretation to relativism,

D. J. Bedingham, D. Dürr, G-C. Ghirardi, S. Goldstein, R. Tumulka and N. Zanghì, “Matter Density and Relativistic Models of Wave Function Collapse”, Journal of Statistical Physics 154, page 623 (2014), arXiv:quant-ph/1111.1425v4

the following: the authors admit that the mass of a particle is spread over the space. In particular, the mass density of an electron would be

ρ(r) = m0 |ϕ(r)|2,

where m0 is the electron mass, and ϕ(r) the electron wave-function.

Could such an assumption be justified? I'll ask otherwise: when a charged particle p approaches a hydrogen atom, what it feels? Does it feel the field of a charged sphere, the total charge being 1e? Or, does it feel a time-varying field of a charge 1e changing all the time its position?

In the former case, the assumption of the authors seems to have some justification. So, which version is correct?

I have given in the handbook an extensive documentation on the Ramsauer-Townsend transparency effect. Printed, this documentation weighs about 1526 g.

It leaves not any chance to the corpusculist and artilleryman scenario: " when a charged particle p approaches a hydrogen atom, what it feels? ".

Never an individual wave such as a free electron transmutes into something corpuscular.

The handbook: ISBN 978-2-9562312-0-2 in french,

978-2-9562312-1-9 in english.

Jacques,

If you ask in a polite form, without calumnies, I have no problem to answer you. Stay polite, decent, and we can talk. My problem, is, though, that I am unbearably busy.

Now, read attentively, because there is, potentially, room for confusion here. The issue is of which range of energies we speak.

At high energies, a quantum system - what we call (non-rigorously) particle - indeed behaves as a particle because its wave-packet is very small, and does not disperse quickly, i.e. the wave-packet remains small during the time. This wave-packet has at any time a position (its center position) and a linear momentum - the group linear momentum. Thus, even of a photon is a particle - e.g. a gamma ray is a particle without any doubt. Compton proved xperimentally that a photon has a linear momentum, as has a billiard ball. He got Nobel prize for that. Search under "Compton scattering" in Wikipedia.

But at low energies the story is drastically different. The wave-packet is very wide, ad also the relative spread in linear momentum in comparison with the average linear momentum, is wide, because the average linear momentum is small.

So, we have a wave. But the big problem of the QM is whether in this wave floats a particle, eventually following a trajectory. This is what the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation assumes.

Many people embraced the dBB interpretation. But this interpretation has a capital limitation - it is not relativistic, and cannot be extended to become relativistic.

So, you see, one has to make a clear demarkation between high energies and low energies.

I stop here for the moment, it's unwise to stuff too much material in one comment.

Take the example of a long photon, the gamma transferred from a nucleus of 57Fe to a 57 Fe, as given by the Mössbauer resonance, and used by Pound and Rebka to prove the influence of 21 m difference of altitude on the flowing of time (General Relativity); it is long photon, about 10 to 20 m for a wavelength of 0.861 Å (86,1 pm): very precisely defined in frequency.

Where will you put your imaginary corpuscle? And what could be the interest of imagining a corpuscle?

Does an electromagnetic wave need a corpuscle to carry its momentum?

http://jacques.lavau.deonto-ethique.eu/rayonnement.html

Jacques,

As I said, you have to be VERY patient. I work very hard and I am terribly busy. I will try to answer you tomorrow. But you have to give me more details. You say a "long photon" which is a gamma photon.

Look at this table

......................λ (cm)......\nu (Hz)

Cosmic rays..10-12....... 1022

Gamma rays..5×10-10... 5×1020

X rays.............5×10-8......5×1018

UV rays..........5×10-6......5×1016

Visible............5×10-5......5×1015

IR....................5×10-4......5×1013

Microwaves...5...............5×1010

Radio waves..104...........106

You say,

"it is long photon, about 10 to 20 m for a wavelength of 0.861 Å (86,1 pm): very precisely defined in frequency. "

What are those 10 to 20m, I do not nderstand, what you want to say with them? Do you want to say that this is the length of the wave-packet? If so, give me the reference.

Also, look at the table, 1Å is in at the bottom of the X ray range, it's not gamma.

But, now I go to sleep, "tomorrow is another day".

Dear Jacques Lavau,

I'm duly impressed by your transactional list of 15 surreptitious copenhagenist postulates, and - believe me - I'm not challenging you: all the contrary.

My question concerns what you say about "long photons". Years ago, Franco Selleri told me something like that.

Now, discarding both photons (see the book "The Nature of Light: What is a Photon? by Chandrasekhar Roychoudhuri, Shahriar Afshar and 25 others) and the electron coupling with quasi-particles, could you inform me about possible experimental results concerning long electrons or long protons?

Best regards

Adriano Orefice

Jacques,

About your example with the "long" X-ray (it's X-ray not gamma), I repeat, I'd like to see the reference. I suspect that the long beam you talk about is a laser beam - if I understand correctly that the 10 to 20m is the length of the wave-packet. Long wave-packets have a well-defined frequency. However, laser beams they coherent light, not Fock states. Coherent light has an undefined number of photons in it, not one single photon as the Fock state |1>.

Thus, I can't speak of how looks like a single photon from the beam you talked about.

To be precise, theoretically we can pass such a beam through a beam-splitter which transmits most of the beam but reflects only a very small part. In this case, the reflected beam may be as weak as to contain, on average, one photon. The photon would have a linear momentum p = h/λ. Still it would be as long as we prepared it.

Though, I can tell you for sure that photons of energy in the X-ray domain perform the Compton scattering. Look in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_effect

I'll quote from there a few sentences, most relevnt to our talk:

"Compton scattering is an example of inelastic scattering of light by a free charged particle, where the wavelength of the scattered light is different from that of the incident radiation. In Compton's original experiment (see Fig. 1), the energy of the X ray photon (≈17 keV) was very much larger than the binding energy of the atomic electron, so the electrons could be treated as being free. The amount by which the light's wavelength changes is called the Compton shift. . . . . Compton earned the 1927 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery.

The effect is significant because it demonstrates that light cannot be explained purely as a wave phenomenon.

Thomson scattering, the classical theory of an electromagnetic wave scattered by charged particles, cannot explain shifts in wavelength at low intensity . . . . .

Thus, light must behave as if it consists of particles, if we are to explain low-intensity Compton scattering. Or the assumption that the electron can be treated as free is invalid resulting in the effectively infinite electron mass equal to the nuclear mass (see e.g. the comment below on elastic scattering of X-rays being from that effect). Compton's experiment convinced physicists that light can be treated as a stream of particle-like objects (quanta called photons), whose energy is proportional to the light wave's frequency."

Now, for answering you where is the particle in the long beam, I need from you the reference on how is prepared the 10 to 20m beam - is it a laser beam?

Dear Sofia,

I think bifurcatons in classical physics derived from chaos, might be a link. Then there are discrete values and 'distances' between. Together with homogenisation in space or time or a suitable space-time, one could consider both quantum states and smeared from such ensembles.

I have a reference, but the main result is covered in text about many other ideas. This , Figure 4, is new and derived from the results shown in Figure 3. Write an article and quote, and neglect the hen and egg-nonsense in the beginning, if you like.

Technical Report Concepts of nco related to cosmos, states, Feynman-collapse ...

In 1927, when he wrote Über den Comptoneffect, Schrödinger had not at hand the right equidistance, to prove that the Compton scattering is nothing else than a Bragg diffraction.

The bad luck is that Schrödinger had been intensively demoralized by the violences from Niels Bohr and the Knabenphysiker from Göttingen, so he never published the correction in 1930 nor later. Only Dirac mentions this result in his Nobel lecture, in half a sentence.

So I had to rediscover all in 2011 :

Article The Zitterbewegung : key of the electron-photon scattering u...

Only the Zitterbewegung gives the right equidistance for the stationary electron wave the photon bounces on.

Jacques,

Did I tell you that I am very busy, or didn't I? You cannot jump from one issue to another. Please be coherent. One solves an issue, and only after that one moves to another issue.

I understand, you have many things on your heart, and want to share them with users. But, if you put them in my threads, then it is as if you ask me, or bring them to my attention.

Please, if you are impatient, then open other threads. There are many competent people here. But if nyou want ME to see what you have to say, then WAIT!

I am not young and there is burden on my anyway.

And first of all, let's settle the problem of the long photon. A Fock state, |1>, is not long. Do you know what is a coherent wave (as lasers emit)?

A coherent state is quite the opposite of a Fock state. In a Fock state the number of particles - photons in our case, is fixed - and we speak here of the Fock state |1>, one photon, questioning whether it is a particle or not.

In a coherent state the number of particles is undefinite. So, the question whether the photon is a particle is not good for this state.

On the other way, the coherent state has a very long coherence length - in short, the wave-packet is long.

A Fock state has an extremely short coherence length - the wave-packet is short.

Now, I asked you to answer me WHETHER YOUR LONG BEAM IS A LASER BEAM. I asked you a couple of times. Please do not run away. Let's settle the problem properly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ah, Cristian,

I ask you as I ask people in general. Please be kind, together with recommending a work to be read, do tell me in a few lines what is(are) the good idea(s) you saw there, and for which you recommend that material.

Please see in which situation I am: I began to write an article with a proof that there is no place in QM for particles following continuous trajectories. This proof is a novelty. So far, so good. But I needed to make some reference to the GRW theory. So, in the middle of the previous article I had to complete something about the GRW theory. Then, a claim from Klaus Kassner came, and in the middle with dealing with the GRW, I had to complete a review about the ESSW experiment - about which, but the way, I found something EXTREMELY SURPRIZING.

Let me say again my main problem/claim: I see that we do not understand the superposition principle. Please look again at my question, there where I speak of Many Worlds. For me it's Science Fiction. Though, I am asking myself wjether it could contain a grain of truth. Whether the Nature behaves AS IF there were Many Worlds. But I don't know to say more exact things, i.e. what exactly could be this "AS IF".

With kind regards,

Sofia

Quotations from the handbook.

The changing of the scale in the Fourier transform:

\mathscr{F}\left[f\left(a.x\right)\right] = \frac{1}{\left|a\right|}\hat{f}\left(\frac{\nu}{a}\right)

If you spread the pre-image, the spectral transform is more concentrated.

...

The lengths of coherence were known then (1961) by experiments with a long difference of path, and then they knew that each wave train from an atom had a ceiling of length about one meter, in the visible range.

Source : D. V. Sivoukhine. Cours de physique générale, tome 4 : optique. Ch. 3, § 30 and 31. Éditions Mir, 1984.

...

The durations and the properties of the transitions, such as the lengths of coherence of the photons, as revealed by the interferences described for 1802 by Thomas Young, are incompatible with the corpuscularist postulate.

In a standard handbook, you could find the detail of the hyperfine structure of the state 1s of the hydrogen atom: the base level 1s is split in two by the spins of the proton and the electron. They cost slightly more to be parallel than antiparallel. Thanks to the hydrogen maser, we know with high precision the difference of intrinsic frequencies between those two states: 1,420,405,751.768 Hz, in the precision of the last significant digit. Moreover, we know that the transition is officially “highly improbable”, as the mean duration of the state F = 1 is about 3.5 . 1014 s, that is about 100,000 years. But even under torture, they will never say the magnitude of the duration of the photon emitted at that frequency, corresponding to the line at 21 cm, highly scrutinized by the radioastronomers. It is because in the Göttingen-København tribe, it was admitted at the beginning of the 20th century, that the photons are instantaneous grains, and that also the electrons are punctual grains.

One who has a minimum of practice with the lasers, knows that not any laser cavity is built, nor even definable with such level of precision, 10-13, very far from that. So it is indeed the collective of photons which has an enormous intrinsic precision, so each photon is very long: say at one milliard periods, it lasts 0.7 s, on a length about 210,000 km, that is a plausible magnitude. Indeed, the “very long lifetime” of the state with parallel spins implies an excellent definition in energy and frequency of the initial state; concerning the final state, it has no threats on its lifetime – virtually infinite – so not either on its excellent definition in frequency. So both have a frequency definition better than the millihertz. The duration of the photon gives us lower bound of the duration of the average free path in that kind of interstellar gas, emitting on 21 cm.

...

What was to prove by Pound and Rebka, next by Pound and Snider was gh/c2 = 2.5 × 10−15.

...

To have a better precision, they had to cool and thermostate both the source on its boomer, and the sensor. And had to better evaluate the speed of the source.

The precision of the experiments by Pound and Rebka, next by Pound and Snider, were well improved since, with a hydrogen maser, with an accuracy of 10-4 of the relativist effect to prove.

End of quotations.

Jacques,

I see your answer. But it's terribly late in my country. "Tomorrow is another day".

Just a remark - it's not a complete answer.

"lengths of coherence of the photons, as revealed by the interferences described for 1802 by Thomas Young, are incompatible with the corpuscularist postulate."

NO! If a photon had null coherence length you WOULDN'T SEE IT! The coherence time means how long time it is coherent with itself. If it is not coherent with itself at all, that means, it is self-destroyed by destructive interference, s.t. its wave-packet would have had a length zero.

When I was a student we did experiments (of interference) with Newton rings (alternate bright and dark). It was with thermal light from a Na source. Thermal light is completely disorderd, it's not a coherent state, neither a Fock state, it's a MIXED state. I.e. it is not characterized by a wave-function, but by a density matrix (if my words are not clear, tell me!)

Thus, each photon in the beam interferes with itsef for a very, very, short time.

For long coherence times, I repeat, you need a coherent beam, as emitted by a laser.

Now, would you leave me with the "Göttingen-København tribe"? You know to perfection that such words irritate me. You are over-reacting. Please calm dow, I can talk with you about questions, about what is known today. For other things I don't have time, I hardly have a few hours per day to sleep.

About the 21cm line, YOU may establish the duration of the wave-packet, by experiment, I'll tell you tomorrow with God's help.

But now I really go to have some sleep, "tomorrow is another day".

D. Sivoukhine. Cours de physique générale, tome IV Optique, page 224, ch. 3, § 30. Thermal monochromatic sources, down to 108 Hz in spectral width, duration of coherence up to 10-8 s, length of coherence up to 1 m.

Edition Mir.

Jacques,

But what are the frequences? You mention the band width, but not the frequences.

Unless otherwise specified, the optics handbook deals with visible frequencies.

In IR or UV range, the equipment changes. For instance, for spectroscopy in the IR, you need a NaCl window.

I suggest you to look at Compton's experiment

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/quantum/compdat.html#c2

It's a very brief description. The X-rays he used were in the range between X and gamma, 7.09×10-9cm. I can't find the coherence length of these photons.

Anyway, what happened with them when meeting the graphite, they changed the wavelength, and keep in mind that the photon linear momentum is p = h/λ.

Thomson scattering, the classical theory of an electromagnetic wave scattered by charged particles, cannot explain shifts in wavelength at low intensity.

Now, you posed another problem, how can a long photon be a particle. I do not want to say things about coherent waves, which are not ONE PHOTON - I just don't want to get into such complications.

The photon is not divisible: try to chop the wave-packet of a photon into shorter pieces than the photon coherence length. You alter the spectrum of energies of the photon - the Fourier transform tell you this. Long as it may be, the photon is an entity.

Now, what Compton proved was that the photon participates in inellastic scattering AS IF it were a billiard ball, i.e. with exchange of linear momentum.

I understand your being surprized that a billiard ball may be long - although, again, I don't know how long is a photon that can undergo Compton scattering. You asked me, where is the particle in this long wave-packet. JACQUES, the wave-packet is the particle.

Article The Zitterbewegung : key of the electron-photon scattering u...

Definition:

A photon is a successful transaction between three partners: an emitter, an absorber, and the space, and/or the transparent or half-transparent medium in between, which transfers by electromagnetic means, a quantum of looping h, and an energy-momentum whose value depends on the respective frames of the emitter and the absorber.

In 2018, this definition is no more negociable.

Hence, the gamma rays emerging from the 57Fe do not all have the same fineness in frequency nor the same length. Only those absorbed by a resonating 57Fe nucleus have a great fineness in frequency and a great length, depending on the temperature of the Fe crystal and of the radioactive layer on rhodium. Only the Mössbauer ones.

Each time you change the location or the nature of the absorber, you change of experiment. Feynman did not understand that.

And if there is no absorber, the photon is not emitted? Does the present depend on future?

The bandwidth of the emitter is not defined by any future manipulation. The bandwidth is determined by the preparation procedure and not by what is going to be done in the future.

The fact that the present is not determined by the future is a fundamental law of our universe, moreover, a law of the logic. To say it otherwise, a universe in which the present is determined by the future, cannot be produced, because in such a universe nothing can happen, including the generation of such a universe.

What is a photon, everybody who learnt Planck's formula, and Compton scattering, knows. If a photon, or any other quantum object, behaves in an experiment, more like a particle, or more like a wave, depends on the preparation and on the experiment.

And according to the ideation of the Göttingen-København pack, an atom must wait up to more than fourteen milliards of years to know in what direction it recoils, because of the "collapse of the wave function" in the macroscopic frame of the laboratory...

Once in his dispute against Einstein, Bohr admitted that mysteriously, the emitter groped the environment to know in which way to behave. Once.

But never admitted that in 1923 Louis de Broglie gave the way of this groping. De Broglie also ignored what he had discovered.

For 1928, we know that an electron (= electron wave) has four components, two of them are retrochronous. Dirac, 1928.