Insights How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Orthodox Quantum Mechanics - Comments

  • #251
vanhees71 said:
Which speed are you referring to?
The speed of propagation of the wave function e.i. the solution of the Schrodinger's equation, in the PDE sense. Compactly supported initial data don't remain compactly supported.
 
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  • #252
Sure, but why should it be in a non-relativistic theory?
 
  • #253
name123 said:
But in BM with the Bell Tests, are the changes to the 2nd particle's position not explained by changes to the guiding wave on measurement of the first particle?
No. They are expained by changes of the position of the first particle.
 
  • #254
Demystifier said:
No. They are expained by changes of the position of the first particle.

So the guiding wave for the second particle is no different from how it would have been if the first particle had not been measured? (sorry if I am being slow here, but just checking that you aren't suggesting that the change in the position of the first particle (rather than its measurement) changes the guiding wave and thereby changes the position of the second particle).
 
  • #255
vanhees71 said:
Sure, but why should it be in a non-relativistic theory?
Where did I say or implied that it should!
 
  • #256
name123 said:
So the guiding wave for the second particle is no different from how it would have been if the first particle had not been measured?
That's correct (except for the technical detail that we cannot really talk about the second-particle wave, because there is only a second-particle density matrix).
 
  • #257
name123 said:
So what is the suggested mechanism for the first particle altering the second particle's position across that distance?
There is no mechanism in the mechanical sense. There is only an equation which describes how it happens.
 
  • #258
Demystifier said:
There is no mechanism in the mechanical sense. There is only an equation which describes how it happens.

So nothing more than an equation that gives the result, no theoretical explanation of how such "spooky action at a distance" could happen in a physical universe?
 
  • #259
name123 said:
So nothing more than an equation that gives the result, no theoretical explanation of how such "spooky action at a distance" could happen in a physical universe?
Yep.
 
  • #260
Demystifier said:
Yep.

Thanks for your help, and clearing up my misconception (of thinking that the guiding wave/field propagating at faster than light speed was the explanation) :)
 
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  • #261
name123 said:
Thanks for your help, and clearing up my misconception (of thinking that the guiding wave/field propagating at faster than light speed was the explanation) :)
Thank you for asking sharp questions. It's a pleasure to explain things to people who know what confuses them.
 
  • #262
name123 said:
Thanks for your help, and clearing up my misconception (of thinking that the guiding wave/field propagating at faster than light speed was the explanation) :)

Why didn't you mention about the quantum potential, name123? I heard the quantum potential is non-local in that it can track a particle somewhere in Andromeda galaxy and a particle on Earth especially if they are entangled.. so it's like the quantum potential can track all the particles in the universe at once. What do you think?
 
  • #263
fanieh said:
Why didn't you mention about the quantum potential, name123? I heard the quantum potential is non-local in that it can track a particle somewhere in Andromeda galaxy and a particle on Earth especially if they are entangled.. so it's like the quantum potential can track all the particles in the universe at once. What do you think?

I am not sure what it is. Is it supposed to be a field or a particle or something else? My physics is pretty poor, so if you think it might be an answer maybe one of the advisers could help. As I understand it tachyon fields are not theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, only tachyon particles. Apart from spacetime, fields, and particles (in some theories) I am not aware of anything else being said to exist in a physical universe.
 
  • #264
name123 said:
I am not sure what it is. Is it supposed to be a field or a particle or something else? My physics is pretty poor, so if you think it might be an answer maybe one of the advisers could help. As I understand it tachyon fields are not theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, only tachyon particles. Apart from spacetime, fields, and particles (in some theories) I am not aware of anything else being said to exist in a physical universe.

How come tachyon fields are not theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, while tachyon particles can? May I know what is the explanation based on what you learnt?
 
  • #265
name123 said:
I am not sure what it is. Is it supposed to be a field or a particle or something else? My physics is pretty poor, so if you think it might be an answer maybe one of the advisers could help. As I understand it tachyon fields are not theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, only tachyon particles. Apart from spacetime, fields, and particles (in some theories) I am not aware of anything else being said to exist in a physical universe.

according to wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_potential

"Bohm and Basil Hiley also called the quantum potential an information potential, given that it influences the form of processes and is itself shaped by the environment.[9] Bohm indicated "The ship or aeroplane (with its automatic Pilot) is a self-active system, i.e. it has its own energy. But the form of its activity is determined by the information content concerning its environment that is carried by the radar waves. This is independent of the intensity of the waves. We can similarly regard the quantum potential as containing active information. It is potentially active everywhere, but actually active only where and when there is a particle." (italics in original).[73]"

But Demystifier and other researchers think de Broglie pilot wave approach without quantum potential is more elegant.. but isn't Bohm Quantum Potential also elegant in that this is directly connected to his idea of the Implicate Order? This is closer to AdS/CFT idea than the approach used by Valentini where the quantum vacuum is some kind of fluid of hydrodynamics? Is it not Demystifier? So does it depend on researchers if quantum potential is elegant or not.. or it's just not or never will be elegant?
 
  • #266
fanieh said:
How come tachyon fields are not theorized to travel faster than the speed of light, while tachyon particles can? May I know what is the explanation based on what you learnt?

Regarding tachyon fields I had read in wiki
---
The term "tachyon" was coined by Gerald Feinberg in a 1967 paper[7] that studied quantum fields with imaginary mass. Feinberg believed such fields permitted faster than light propagation, but it was soon realized that Feinberg's model in fact did not allow for superluminal speeds.[6] Instead, the imaginary mass creates an instability in the configuration: any configuration in which one or more field excitations are tachyonic will spontaneously decay, and the resulting configuration contains no physical tachyons. This process is known as tachyon condensation. A famous example is the condensation of the Higgs boson in the Standard Model of particle physics.
---

But with tachyon particles I assume they are not theorized to undergo tachyon condensation (something only fields do maybe), and their imaginary mass allows faster than light speed in the relativity equations. As I mentioned though, I was just assuming.
 
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  • #267
fanieh said:
according to wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_potential

"Bohm and Basil Hiley also called the quantum potential an information potential, given that it influences the form of processes and is itself shaped by the environment.[9] Bohm indicated "The ship or aeroplane (with its automatic Pilot) is a self-active system, i.e. it has its own energy. But the form of its activity is determined by the information content concerning its environment that is carried by the radar waves. This is independent of the intensity of the waves. We can similarly regard the quantum potential as containing active information. It is potentially active everywhere, but actually active only where and when there is a particle." (italics in original).[73]"

But Demystifier and other researchers think de Broglie pilot wave approach without quantum potential is more elegant.. but isn't Bohm Quantum Potential also elegant in that this is directly connected to his idea of the Implicate Order? This is closer to AdS/CFT idea than the approach used by Valentini where the quantum vacuum is some kind of fluid of hydrodynamics? Is it not Demystifier? So does it depend on researchers if quantum potential is elegant or not.. or it's just not or never will be elegant?

My mathematical knowledge is poor and so is my understanding of physics described mathematically rather than conceptually. From what I read in that wiki link I thought the quantum potential was being described as a feature of the guiding wave. So I am not sure how it can be done away (it seems to be part of the equation). Perhaps reply to a Demystifier post directly, and he can explain his position concerning it.
 
  • #268
name123 said:
My mathematical knowledge is poor and so is my understanding of physics described mathematically rather than conceptually. From what I read in that wiki link I thought the quantum potential was being described as a feature of the guiding wave. So I am not sure how it can be done away (it seems to be part of the equation). Perhaps reply to a Demystifier post directly, and he can explain his position concerning it.

Are you saying the quantum potential is like the guiding wave where the guiding wave can't affect the quiding wave of different particles? But it seems the quantum potential can affect quantum potential of different particles.. wiki mentioned "David Bohm and Basil Hiley in 1975 presented how the concept of a quantum potential leads to the notion of an "unbroken wholeness of the entire universe", proposing that the fundamental new quality introduced by quantum physics is nonlocality"

So I'm thinking the quantum potential is the cause of your "theoretical explanation of how such "spooky action at a distance" could happen in a physical universe".. but Demystifier seems to say no. So I'm now kinda confused. I'll think about it more. You research it too. Thanks.
 
  • #269
I just found this site:

Problems with Bohmian mechanics
<mod: approved link>

While this website is (like any web site) not peer reviewed, it contains numerous references to peer-reviewed work substantiating that the claims made there are not those of a crank but have a significant support in the scientific community. In fact, much of the contents of the site may be viewed as a review of critiques of Bohmian mechanics. Some references to web sites supporting Bohmian mechanics are also given.

Enjoy!
 
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  • #270
A. Neumaier said:
I just found this site:

Problems with Bohmian mechanics
<mod: approved link>

While this website is (like any web site) not peer reviewed, it contains numerous references to peer-reviewed work substantiating that the claims made there are not those of a crank but have a significant support in the scientific community. In fact, much of the contents of the site may be viewed as a review of critiques of Bohmian mechanics. Some references to web sites supporting Bohmian mechanics are also given.

Enjoy!

BM is good to differentiate between the wave function and the object.. the so called trajectories.. if I have to buy just one book.. which of the following is good:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/3642179738/?tag=pfamazon01-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/3642180914/?tag=pfamazon01-20
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0387229647/?tag=pfamazon01-20

BM can be saved if the original idea of this thread which is about quasiparticles and fundamental particles in condense matter analogy is correct (which Neumaier shared site doesn't mention).

But if BM is just wrong and can be proven to be wrong. Then we either have MWI and Copenhagen as the remaining viable candidates. I prefer Copenhagen.
Sabine is writing a book about the whole thing. She removed the following illustration because she explained her book not funny:

Vj7pWp.jpg


Sabine explains in: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/ (September 6, 2017 entry)
"Why did I remove it? To begin with it was pretty pointless. Also, style doesn't fit with the rest of the book. It's not a funny book really. Then I removed the whole explanation in the text about consistent histories because I found it to be unnecessary and more confusing than enlightening, and somehow I felt with only 5 items the list wouldn't really be a list.

I think in the end I just got fed up with it and that was that."

Bhobba favorite is consistent histories.. so other physicists don't like it.
My question is about Copenhagen. Is Sabine right that it is about "I don't care if the cat is dead"?

It seems our discussions are more advanced that I wonder if the new books coming out would be more complete or breathtaking that shared in PF.
 
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  • #271
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  • #272
Blue Scallop said:
My question is about Copenhagen. Is Sabine right that it is about "I don't care if the cat is dead"?
This is only one of version of Copenhagen. For other versions see https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.08341 Sec. 2.1.
 
  • #273
I might have more comments later but i seem to never get enough time...until then:

I just wanted to applaud Demystifier not letting what is not conceptually satisfactory pass!

Demystifier said:
The thing that bothered me was how could Nature work like that? How could that possibly be? What could be a possible physical mechanism behind the abstract rules of QM? Should one conclude that there is no mechanism at all and that standard QM (including QFT) is the end of story?
I feel exactly the same way, even though my hypothesis may lie in a different direction. Power to you for not swallowing what is really substandard reasoning, and not loosing focus! That in an environment where it is a fact that "most people" seem to ignore these things probably for pragmatic reasons. I have found this extremely disturbing.

Thanks for sharing your journey!

/Fredrik
 
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  • #274
And the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-measurements_interpretation seems saying "Cat knows, ask him..."
 
  • #276
Demystifier said:
It seems, but we don't know if this persists at even smaller distances than available by current experimental technology. The default hypothesis is that it persists, but a hypothesis that it doesn't is also legitimate and Bohmian mechanics is not the only motivation for such a "heretic" hypothesis. See e.g. Horava gravity.

As before, i have a different angle but i agree to this 100%

My default hypothesis is that lorentz invarance (and spacetime itself for that matter) are indeed emergent at lower(but still high) energies. I think that at very high energies causality become more stochastic and the arrow of time get more and more uncertain and thus lorentz symmetry loose its meaning.

Thus any no-go claims as to what isn't possible based on extrapolating lorentz invariance to infinity might in fact misguide us.

/Fredrik
 
  • #277
My recent paper "Bohmian mechanics for instrumentalists" linked in my signature below is a sort of an elaborated version of the insight at the beginning of this thread.
 
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  • #278
Demystifier said:
Demystifier submitted a new PF Insights post
@Demystifier, I did not read your article until today, thank you for a very interesting account! And an extra thumbs up from me for the very funny title! :biggrin:
 
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  • #279
I only read it today too, and as someone who is also fascinated by the Bohmian interpretation (but only acquinted with it at a superficial level), I enjoyed it thoroughly. Many thanks.
 
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  • #280
Demystifier said:
I am not an expert for applications of BM as a computational tool, but I think the Wyatt's book is the best.
Agreed here. Even from a purely mathematical PDE point of view, the striking similarity between QM and hydrodynamics, i.e. the so-called quantum hydrodynamics, absolutely fascinates me. A mathematical physicist by the name of R. Carroll rejoins in this fascination, quoted here.

What is your opinion of the hydrodynamic formulation?
 
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  • #281
Auto-Didact said:
What is your opinion of the hydrodynamic formulation?
I think it cannot explain why the unique measuremenet outcomes appear. For instance, in the two-slit experiment with a single photon, why do we detect photon at a single position only?
 
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  • #282
Demystifier said:
I am not an expert for applications of BM as a computational tool, but I think the Wyatt's book is the best.
In which sense is BM a "computational tool"? It only adds the trajectories a posteriori when the wave function is calculated from "conventional QT". I always considered BM as just an alternative deterministic non-local interpretation of non-relativistic QT but not that one can establish some practical calculational tools using it.
 
  • #283
vanhees71 said:
In which sense is BM a "computational tool"? It only adds the trajectories a posteriori when the wave function is calculated from "conventional QT".
There is a way to compute trajectories first and then to infer the wave function from it. See e.g. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.82.5190
 
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  • #284
Demystifier said:
My recent paper "Bohmian mechanics for instrumentalists" linked in my signature below is a sort of an elaborated version of the insight at the beginning of this thread.
My problem with your signature is that it seems that there is quite a bit of wishful thinking motivated only by the desire that BM is the true description of the world.
 
  • #285
martinbn said:
My problem with your signature is that it seems that there is quite a bit of wishful thinking motivated only by the desire that BM is the true description of the world.
You may call it wishful thinking, I call it physical hypothesis motivated by physical intuition based on BM. In a sense, any scientific hypothesis can be thought of as wishful thinking, but it doesn't make the hypothesis less scientific. The 19th century hypothesis that matter is made of atoms was also an example of "wishful thinking".

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw
 
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  • #286
Not sure if Shaw meant physics, I suspect that by the world he probably meant society.
Demystifier said:
You may call it wishful thinking, I call it physical hypothesis motivated by physical intuition based on BM. In a sense, any scientific hypothesis can be thought of as wishful thinking, but it doesn't make the hypothesis less scientific. The 19th century hypothesis that matter is made of atoms was also an example of "wishful thinking".
The way your proposal looks to me, in line of your example, is as someone proposing that atoms don't exist and it only appears that way. And he suggests that based on his favorite model.
 
  • #287
Demystifier said:
I think it cannot explain why the unique measuremenet outcomes appear. For instance, in the two-slit experiment with a single photon, why do we detect photon at a single position only?
The mathematical reason for unique measurement outcomes in single particle wavefunctions is due to the non-local nature of the system i.e. the presence of some cohomology element ##\eta##: for any sufficiently small open subregion ##G'## of a region ##G##, the cohomology element ##\eta## vanishes when restricted down to ##G'##. See this thread for elaboration and/or further discussion.

In either case, the hydrodynamic formulation doesn't specifically set out to answer such a question in the first place, even though it might be able to if one would select the correct nonlinear PDE to generalize towards which naturally contains such non-local properties.

Excuse me, I should have clarified earlier; I meant what is your opinion on the mathematical physics (as explained here) of the hydrodynamic formulation of QM? Do you view such mathematical work as pure baseless numerology? I get the feeling many theoretical physicists do.

For more background, here is a recent survey article by fluid dynamicist John Bush (MIT, Applied Math), primarily described in section 4 and 5 (feel free to skip section 1-3, if you are already familiar with it and/or like me not necessarily so much interested in experimental analogues): Pilot Wave Hydrodynamics.
 
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  • #288
martinbn said:
My problem with your signature is that it seems that there is quite a bit of wishful thinking motivated only by the desire that BM is the true description of the world.
"The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them. In this methodological uncertainty, one might suppose that there were any number of possible systems of theoretical physics all equally well justified; and this opinion is no doubt correct, theoretically. But the development of physics has shown that at any given moment, out of all conceivable constructions, a single one has always proved itself decidedly superior to all the rest."
- Einstein
Demystifier said:
You may call it wishful thinking, I call it physical hypothesis motivated by physical intuition based on BM. In a sense, any scientific hypothesis can be thought of as wishful thinking, but it doesn't make the hypothesis less scientific. The 19th century hypothesis that matter is made of atoms was also an example of "wishful thinking".

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw
"Long may Louis de Broglie continue to inspire those who suspect that what is proved by impossibility proofs is lack of imagination."
- John Stewart Bell
martinbn said:
Not sure if Shaw meant physics, I suspect that by the world he probably meant society.

The way your proposal looks to me, in line of your example, is as someone proposing that atoms don't exist and it only appears that way. And he suggests that based on his favorite model.
"One should not reproach the theorist who undertakes such a task by calling him a fantast; instead, one must allow him his fantasizing, since for him there is no other way to his goal whatsoever. Indeed, it is no planless fantasizing, but rather a search for the logically simplest possibilities and their consequences."
- Einstein
 
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