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nutgeb
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I've read a lot of philosophical "blah, blah, blah" (pardon the euphemism) by QM physicists trying to noodle through why the exact location of a collapsed photon wave function is probabilistic in nature rather than determinative. One of theories I find most intuitively appealing says the collapse location is not subject to chance, but rather there are "hidden variables" which determine the outcome, whose nature and mechanics we are not currently privy to.
It seems to me that if an individual photon's EM wave has its "choice" among many target electrons into which to be fully absorbed, it would be expected to select the electron which exerts the strongest "attraction" to it at the exact instant in time when the photon is making its choice. One could imagine that a particular electron would be particularly attractive if at that instant it (a) is relatively closest to the probabilistic centrum of the photon's EM wave, (b) is at a particular point in its oscillation cycle and/or atomic orbit at which it attraction intensity is highest, and (c) is positioned consistent with the local constructive interference pattern, if applicable. Obviously I am throwing out simplistic notions, and perhaps they don't make any sense at a technical level.
I'm just wondering whether much has been done to try to find systematic "bottoms-up" attraction variables which might explain why a photon would "choose" to collapse to a particular target location. The reading I've done has turned up only theoretical mathematical work relating to broad, abstract categories of potential hidden attractors, which seems "tops down" in nature.
It seems to me that if an individual photon's EM wave has its "choice" among many target electrons into which to be fully absorbed, it would be expected to select the electron which exerts the strongest "attraction" to it at the exact instant in time when the photon is making its choice. One could imagine that a particular electron would be particularly attractive if at that instant it (a) is relatively closest to the probabilistic centrum of the photon's EM wave, (b) is at a particular point in its oscillation cycle and/or atomic orbit at which it attraction intensity is highest, and (c) is positioned consistent with the local constructive interference pattern, if applicable. Obviously I am throwing out simplistic notions, and perhaps they don't make any sense at a technical level.
I'm just wondering whether much has been done to try to find systematic "bottoms-up" attraction variables which might explain why a photon would "choose" to collapse to a particular target location. The reading I've done has turned up only theoretical mathematical work relating to broad, abstract categories of potential hidden attractors, which seems "tops down" in nature.
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