QM: Measurement Operation & Operators Explained

[JK423]

I`ve read some of the Towler`s lectures and quite a few posts from zenith8 and demystifier who seem to be experts in BM. The explanation that BM gives is very satisfactory plus the fact that the famous paradoxes of CI vanish. The fact that its a non-relativistic theory doesn`t "annoy" me much because only a few people actually work on this theory. So its logical to be slowly developed!
I just wonder what would the today top-experts physicists say to me, if i asked them "why haven't you, as far, worked on Bohmian mechanics" ?
They would just say "Noone else did, so i didnt bother" or they would point me a few arguments which so that BM theory is unsatisfactory and not worth to work on it?

I`m an undergraduate in 4rth year, still in my early steps. I want to be a theoritical physicist in the future, and i really don't want to ignore theories that seem to have a future.
I just can't understand why everyone (even the best physicists) ignore it! There must be reason!

 

[zenith8]

I`ve read some of the Towler`s lectures and quite a few posts from zenith8 and demystifier who seem to be experts in BM. The explanation that BM gives is very satisfactory plus the fact that the famous paradoxes of CI vanish. The fact that its a non-relativistic theory doesn`t "annoy" me much because only a few people actually work on this theory. So its logical to be slowly developed! I just wonder what would the today top-experts physicists say to me, if i asked them "why haven't you, as far, worked on Bohmian mechanics" ? They would just say "Noone else did, so i didnt bother" or they would point me a few arguments which so that BM theory is unsatisfactory and not worth to work on it?

I`m an undergraduate in 4rth year, still in my early steps. I want to be a theoritical physicist in the future, and i really don't want to ignore theories that seem to have a future.

Good lad! May I heartily encourage you..

I just can't understand why everyone (even the best physicists) ignore it! There must be reason!

From what I remember Towler's lecture 7 - 'Why does nobody like pilot-wave theory?' or whatever it's called - was about precisely this point. I think at the end - the answer is simply misunderstanding and peer pressure. No technical objection has ever been sustained - it all comes from Bohr and Heisenberg's insistence on their own infallibility which was widely believed and accepted for decades - despite the fact that their arguments were merely circular and not definitive. The de Broglie-Bohm solution is so simple and stems so obviously from the basic formalism of QM that acceptance of it is tantamount to claiming that Bohr, Heisenberg et al were idiots. Nobody can ever believe that people so widely revered could have been so wrong.

Notice that this is so even if de Broglie-Bohm turns out not to be literally 'true'. Bohr and Heisenberg wrote a great deal about what was possible in QM - and about that they were about as mistaken as it is possible to be.

Remember also that only for about the last ten years has it been possible to say you're interested in de Broglie-Bohm and still keep your job. Even now I have to say that there are people in my department who are aware that I am working on this, and conclude that I must have taken leave of my senses.

Courage, mon ami! (the number of Bohm papers per year in the literature has been increasing steadily since about 1990).

The fact that its a non-relativistic theory doesn`t "annoy" me much because only a few people actually work on this theory.

Actually, it is relativistic (or can be made to be so) - see Towler Lecture 5. The only problem is that it disagrees with some of the 'metaphysics' of relativity, not the physics. The relativistic Bohmian theories are in complete accord with experiment. One could say therefore that the problem lies in the 'interpretation' of relativity (though most people of course are unaware that it even has one!)