I think this thread is interesting. I am going to attempt to answer your question but I am not interested in getting into a debate about hidden variables; so I will leave that part of the discussion aside.
My view is that QM is no more deterministic than flipping a coin is. When I flip a coin...
This is not such an easy question! The baby answer is that the vacuum energy is the zero point energy of the fundamental quantum fields (electro-weak and strong).
Basically, we have d(energy)d(time) ~ h-bar, so for super small time intervals, the uncertainty in energy is huge, and by E=mc^2 we...
unfortunately, there zero point energy of the field is infinite (each level has a zero point energy (1/2)h-bar). The energy of a certain energy level is just the integral of the energy density, so it's not a big deal. Actually if you look at the Poyniting vector of the EM field and the Maxwell...
Ah! I think I understand your question 4 now. Well the answer is yes, you can think about the wave/particle duality in this way. One way to see this is to realize that in QM particles cannot move along definite paths (see Landau vol 3 section 1); this is the main physical content of the...
To answer the question posed by the OP, the interaction between otherwise nuetral molecules at a distance is called "van der wall's" interaction, see Landau vol 5, section 76.
This is sometimes known as the "three six law", because for a non-ideal gas we have the following equation of state...
The answer to this question can be found by a deep study of the Lie Algebra of the group SO(3).
SO(3) is the group of rotations in three space. According to the principle axis theorem, there will be three principle axis for these rotations, corresponding to the three orthogonal axis of...
1) electrons interact by exchanging photons.
2) polarization interacts with the ANGULAR MOMENTUM (spin) of the photons.
3) see (2)
4) I don't understand this question. My opinion is that string theory is fundamentally wrong.
5) There are many bizarre, and sadly funny, beliefs when it comes...
In many of my answers I continue to stress the same point: READ LANDAU!
The reference you want is volume 4, section 2, "quantization of the free electromagnetic field". You must however fully understand volume 2, section 51, "The Fourier resolution of the electrostatic field".
Let's briefly...
The question "why does an electron emit a photon" is very puzzling indeed! This is the mystery of quantum mechanics, it's the same thing as asking "why does an electron land on this or that part of the wall". It's just the probabilistic nature of quantum theory.
But I think you are asking a...
I am sad that I don't have a copy of Hall, so I can't give you the reference. But I studied that book with the guidance of my mentor, and I remember the proof in there was really nice. The thing is, most people just transform the laplacian to spherical polar coordinates and wave their hands to...
I think you will find the discussion in Landau, vol 4, section 1, "The uncertainty principle in the relativistic case" to be very illuminating.
"At first sight, one might expect that the change to a relativistic theory (of QM) is possible by a fairly direct generalization of the formalism of...
There is an answer to the question in your title, and it is this:
The wave function will collapse whenever a quantum system interacts with a system which obeys classical mechanics to a sufficient approximation.
This is all spelled out very clearly in Landau vol 3, chapter 1.
It might simply...
one way to see this would be to compute the cross section for photon photon scattering to some order in the fine structure constant. In other words, the effect is that two photons will have some QED scattering interaction. I'm not sure about macroscopic effects...
The thing to keep in mind, is that the vector potential has a greater physical significance than the magnetic field. Consider Feynman, vol 2, section 15-5, "the vector potential and quantum mechanics". The idea here is that if a beam of light passes through a region of space where the vector...
The gravitational field IS the metric, i.e. it gives the distance between two points. What is this distance physically? It's it the speed of light c times the amount of time it takes for a beam of light to travel between the two points. Keep in mind that a light cone has a boundary, and this...