Recent content by Nicky

I was under the impression that the collapse postulate is only considered an approximation, since it does not define precisely what constitutes "measurement". So if all nonlocality in QM flows from the collapse postulate, then the nonlocality may not be physically real, just an artifact of the...

FYI, the singular of this word is "die" and the plural is "dice". I know no other English word that follows this rule ... what a crazy language!

My opinion is that you have hit upon one aspect of the so-called "macro-objectification problem", which is still an active area of debate and research in physics. Macroscopic objects have a definite position, thus we can easily speak of forces and the E and B fields of the Maxwell equations...

Alledged WIMPs would exhibit gravitational effects in their quantum behavior much more than ordinary matter because they are unaffected by electromagnetism and nuclear forces. For example, if there is any condensed phase of WIMPs we can observe somewhere in the universe, its spectrum (in...

The WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) that have been proposed to explain dark matter might exhibit quantum effects in a gravitational potential well.

If you are talking about an ionized hydrogen molecule (H2+), the electron's charge density is mostly between the two protons. You could think of the system as three point charges along a line: (H+)===(e-)===(H+) From each proton's perspective, the electron is closer than the other...

Alternative theories/interpretations needn't predict ALL physical results identically to orthodox QM, only those QM predictions that have been verified by experiment.

No, no, that's not what I meant. By "artifact of the detector" I don't mean a spurious effect, so maybe "artifact" is the wrong word. I mean it's the presence of the detector that causes the discretization of the beam. The double-slit experiment is always portrayed as if the clicks...

Even if the detector clicks account for 100% of the electron current, there is still a question as to what's happening between clicks. The phrase "only one electron in the apparatus at a time" makes it sound like the beam emitted from the source is composed of very brief, discrete pulses, but...

That's exactly my question. Is it "detecting one electron at a time" or "one electron-detection event at a time". I'm thinking one electron isn't plucked out of the many-particle system made up of source+vacuum gap until the moment of detection.

What's clicking? Is it the same screen that displays the interference pattern?

Presumably this calibration step would involve some kind of position measurement parallel to the beam direction. Such measurement would be necessary to establish the "distance between electrons" to which Tonomura et al. refer. But then the Born rule implies that the calibration doesn't just...

In the electron double-slit experiment performed by Tonomura et al. (http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=AJPIAS000057000002000117000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes ) it is claimed that only one electron can be in the apparatus at a time, because the electron wavepacket...

I am no expert in Bohmian mechanics, so maybe you are right. I read some criticism of Bohm's account of wavefunction collapse, but it was just informal commentary on the 'net, not a serious analysis. On the other hand, I would point out where Bohm invokes some more "deus ex machina" as you...

I was under the impression that Bohmian mechanics does not explain well the collapse of wavefunctions, i.e. the sudden discontinuity in Bohm's "quantum potential" after measurement.