Is the Standard Model of Physics Aligned with Bohm's or Bohr's Interpretation?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion centers around the alignment of the Standard Model of physics with the interpretations of quantum mechanics proposed by David Bohm and Niels Bohr. Participants explore the implications of these interpretations on the understanding of quantum theory, particularly in relation to the Standard Model's framework and its components such as particle creation and gauge fields.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants suggest that the Standard Model exists independently of either Bohm's or Bohr's interpretations, noting that many experts believe quantum theory remains poorly understood.
  • It is argued that there is no widely accepted relativistic Bohmian theory or Bohmian field theory that can account for most aspects of the Standard Model, which complicates alignment with Bohm's interpretation.
  • One participant claims that aligning the Standard Model with Bohmian mechanics is not feasible due to the lack of a comprehensive Bohmian framework for particle-antiparticle creation and non-abelian gauge fields.
  • Another participant counters that relativistic field theory for simple scalar fields, such as the Higgs, is not problematic and that various Bohmian versions exist for fermions and electromagnetic fields.
  • Concerns are raised about the promotion of fringe theories like Bohmian mechanics in educational contexts, suggesting that it detracts from learning mainstream physics.
  • Some participants advocate for teaching different interpretations of quantum mechanics to highlight their unique features and the observational evidence supporting them.
  • A new approach to quantum mechanics is mentioned, which is based on the de Broglie hypothesis of periodic waves, suggesting it offers a coherent interpretation of quantum field theory and special relativity.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views, with no clear consensus on the alignment of the Standard Model with either interpretation. Disagreements arise regarding the validity and educational value of Bohmian mechanics compared to mainstream theories.

Contextual Notes

Some limitations are noted regarding the acceptance of Bohmian theories in the context of the Standard Model, including the absence of a generally accepted relativistic Bohmian framework and the challenges in aligning it with established quantum field theory predictions.

Descartz2000
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Is the Standard Model of physics more aligned with Bohm's or Bohr's interpretations? And if more aligned with Bohm, then why is the Copenhagen model so highly regarded and not Bohm's?
 
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Opinion of a non expert. The standard model sort of exists without either interpretation. However many experts in the field agree that no one really understands quantum theory. Bohm and Bohr start out with the same theory, but their attempts at explanation differ.
 
There is no Bohmian account of most of the standard model, since there is no generally accepted relativistic Bohmian theory, and there is no generally accepted Bohmian field theory, there is only a Bohmian theory of non-relativistic QM particles.

Therefore aligning the standard model, along with the notion of particle/anti-particle creation, non-abelian gauge fields, and the Higgs mechanism, is not a foreseeable option using the Bohmian approach.

Personally I think it is wrong to encourage students of physics to study fringe theories like Bohmian mechanics, students who don't know any better, since it takes away time that they could use to learn mainstream physics. Really there is no Bohmian theory, just a single Bohmian spiel, and ideas like this or LQG get 10,000% more attention on PF than in any major research university. Sorry for the rant, I just find fringe science and the corresponding delusions of grandeur to be a truly sad phenomenon that young people get sucked into, in some cases worse than, and in fact highly correlated with, drugs.
 
ExactlySolved said:
There is no Bohmian account of most of the standard model, since there is no generally accepted relativistic Bohmian theory, and there is no generally accepted Bohmian field theory, there is only a Bohmian theory of non-relativistic QM particles.

In principle, correct, because different people prefer different Bohmian versions in the domain of field theory. But it creates a wrong impression.

Therefore aligning the standard model, along with the notion of particle/anti-particle creation, non-abelian gauge fields, and the Higgs mechanism, is not a foreseeable option using the Bohmian approach.

That's wrong. Relativistic field theory for a simple scalar field (like Higgs) is not problematic at all. This includes the full beauty of relativity as well as particle-antiparticle creation.

Various versions exist for fermions (Bell, Colin, Valentini), as well as for the EM field (Struyve Westman). I don't believe that the BRST quantization scheme corresponds to something in reality, and therefore do not think that one should even try to construct a Bohmian variant of BRST quantization.

Another point is that to recover the empirical QFT predictions one does not even need a QFT version for all fields, having one only for fermions, or only for the EM field, is sufficient for this. A theory build in this way is not that beautiful, therefore it is clear that people disagree with such versions and try to find something better, but from the purely positivistic point of view there is no reason to object: Bells "fermions only" theory is empirically as good as QFT, even better: QFT is not a realistic theory, Bell's theory is realistic, but only not really beautiful.

Personally I think it is wrong to encourage students of physics to study fringe theories like Bohmian mechanics, students who don't know any better, since it takes away time that they could use to learn mainstream physics.

Personally I think that different interpretations should be teached. It is clearly an improvement if one recognizes what is a particular feature of a particular interpretation and what is supported by observational evidence. The easiest way to get this difference is to have different interpretations. Teaching them only shut up and calculate and often enough plainly wrong things, like the impossibility of a deterministic interpretation, is much worse.



Really there is no Bohmian theory, just a single Bohmian spiel, and ideas like this or LQG get 10,000% more attention on PF than in any major research university. Sorry for the rant, I just find fringe science and the corresponding delusions of grandeur to be a truly sad phenomenon that young people get sucked into, in some cases worse than, and in fact highly correlated with, drugs.

The Copenhagen interpretation, or, even worse, many worlds, much more remembers something created under the influence of drugs. With enough alcohol inside, one easily sees already two worlds.
 
It's very dangerous to mix drugs with physics and the effect in modern physics is evident. Sometimes it seems that physicists pretend that the nature must follow their hallucinations. The correct approach to physics is to learn with humility from nature, not pretend to be better than nature. Fortunately there is still a lot to learn from the nature of our world (without take into account other ones), like its cyclic behavior, as long as it is left unperturbed.
Recently has been proposed a new (and in my opinion revolutionary) approach to QM mechanics (see thread "quantization from periodic dynamics?") that starts from the de Broglie hypothesis of periodic waves (do you remember the Bohr Hydrogen atom or the old Bohr-Sommerfeld-Einstein interpretation of QM?) and leads to a beautiful and coherent interpretation of QFT and SR. After I read about this theory to me it is difficult to speak again in terms of wave function collapse, virtual particles, Schrödinger cats, MWI, BI, etc... but it seems that I am the only one to notice it.
 

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