New experimental support for pilot wave theory?

In summary, there has been recent research supporting the Debroglie/Bohm pilot wave theory, which is a non-local interpretation of quantum mechanics. This theory has faced criticism in the past, but new experiments have shown that it may have validity and merit further consideration. However, the use of "weak measurements" in these experiments has been questioned and it is important to note that these measurements do not necessarily prove the reality of Bohmian trajectories. Nonetheless, they do demonstrate that this concept is not as artificial as previously thought, similar to the wave function in quantum mechanics. Overall, this paper presents an interesting perspective and adds to the ongoing discussion on interpretations of quantum mechanics.
  • #36
N88 said:
Alice's knowledge is a property of Alice's consciousness.

Well, yes. But for a property of Alice's consciousness to count as knowledge, it has to be about something in the real world. In this case, it's about the outcome of Bob's future measurement.

Given the correlation of the photons, the correlation of the detectors and her knowledge of physics: Alice can anticipate the outcome that will soon be known to Bob.

In other words, she can deduce something about Bob from (1) the initial conditions of the EPR, together with (2) her observations.

Predicting a future test result means that you know something about the future reaction of a photon when tested by a detector. False realism is to have an over-developed sense of realism (based on an inappropriate classicality - from a typical classical-world-view) and attribute the outcome (H-polarization) to the pre-test photon.

The issue is: When Alice makes an observation of her photon, does she learn something about Bob's future measurement result that she didn't know already?

Paraphrasing Zeilinger, "This inference to classicality is based on a mis-interpretation (an inappropriate classically-based interpretation) of the information. If you don't assume this, you don't need nonlocality."

I can't make any sense of that, which is why I'm trying to understand what you (and Zeilinger) mean by that.

Our discussion might be helped by the mathematical answer to this question: How do you move from LHS of Bell's (1964) equation (3) to the RHS?

I'm not talking about Bell's theorem, I'm asking about the nature of Alice's knowledge of Bob's future measurement result. Is that knowledge about the physical world, or not?
 
Physics news on Phys.org
  • #37
bhobba said:
Please post the full detail then me or someone else can comment - just saying Bells (1964) equation 3 is pretty meaningless. And when I say full detail - that's what I mean - generally asking people to decipher papers without formulating a precise issue is not productive. That said if its an equality then you have your answer.

"Bells (1964) equation 3 is pretty meaningless"? See https://cds.cern.ch/record/111654/files/vol1p195-200_001.pdf

I am seeking to link the discussion to the OP. So your own mathematical moves from the LHS to the RHS are of interest to me: I am keen to see where nonlocality and a pilot-wave might enter into your analysis.

bhobba said:
My approach? BM approach? My approach, and the standard approach, is the usual QM formalism which BM also has. There is no difference.

BM has no difference? I thought BM was decidedly nonlocal. Are you implying that all mathematical approaches are nonlocal?

bhobba said:
But Bell is simple - our own doctor Chinese explains it very very clearly:
http://www.drchinese.com/Bells_Theorem.htm

Its simply this. QM allows correlations different to those of classical theory. The reason is in classical probability theory objects have properties at all times. QM is silent on the issue. That is the crucial difference. All Bell shows is if you want it to be like classical theory and have properties at all times then superluminal signalling is required. Its not hard. If you can live with things not having properties until observed then you don't need it. Also there is the issue of if locality is a meaningful concept for correlated systems because the cluster decomposition property, which is locality in QFT, precludes correlated systems. But that is way off topic and requires its own thread.

Also a lot of water has passed under the bridge since Bell wrote that paper - much better to refer to more modern presentations if you want the full mathematical detail:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.5214v2.pdf

I would appreciate you going through the above paper which I have gone through a lot more recently than Bells original paper and then we can have a meaningful discussion.

You misunderstand. Bell's (1964) equation (3) is pure QM. That was the limit of my question to you.

bhobba said:
Added Later:
I had a look at the equation. Since its a singlet state the outcomes are correlated so the expectation on the RHS is simple - it simply the values eg if its 1/2 and -1/2 and you multiply them together its exactly the same as the other way around ie -1/2 and 1/2. Since they are correlated that's the only possibilities.

But, please, please do not discuss that paper. Modern treatments like the paper I linked to will almost certainly be clearer - it would be better to go through it.

Thanks
Bill

Bill, in the context of the OP, and your comments here about ± 1/2, it seems that you do not understand Bell's (1964) equation (3). Do you not have a short mathematical procedure to move from its LHS to its RHS?
 
  • #38
N88 said:
Are you implying that all mathematical approaches are nonlocal?
Actually, they are. All mathematical approaches use a wave function (or something equivalent), and wave function for entangled particles is a nonlocal object. For a 2-particle entangled wave function ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2)##, you cannot say what is the value of wave function at the position ##{\bf x}_1##.
 
  • Like
Likes bhobba
  • #39
N88 said:
"Bells (1964) equation 3 is pretty meaningless"?

The equation is not meaningless - what's meaningless is your asking someone to explain it without context.

N88 said:
I am seeking to link the discussion to the OP. So your own mathematical moves from the LHS to the RHS are of interest to me: I am keen to see where nonlocality and a pilot-wave might enter into your analysis.

The pilot wave has nothing to do with it. Its a general analysis.

N88 said:
BM has no difference? I thought BM was decidedly nonlocal. Are you implying that all mathematical approaches are nonlocal?

What I said - and I will state it as clearly as I can, BM is an interpretation. All interpretations have exactly the same QM formalism. There is no difference - only in interpretation. The QM formalism is silent on locality - BM being an interpretation makes a statement about it (the pilot wave is explicitly non local). That's the sort of thing interpretations do by the definition of interpretations. They fill in things.

N88 said:
Do you not have a short mathematical procedure to move from its LHS to its RHS?

I gave you the answer. I will repeat it. The spins are correlated that means you will get the same answer when multiplied regardless of outcome. It simple when you think about it. If you want me to go deeper you will need to explain precisely what you don't understand about it. The LHS is a statement about expectations. The RHS is what you must get regardless because the singlet state is 100% correlated.

But I again urge you to study the modern link I gave before delving into Bells paper.

Thanks
Bill
 
Last edited:
  • #40
Demystifier said:
Actually, they are. All mathematical approaches use a wave function (or something equivalent), and wave function for entangled particles is a nonlocal object. For a 2-particle entangled wave function ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2)##, you cannot say what is the value of wave function at the position ##{\bf x}_1##.

Right. I would say that the formalism of QM is nonlocal, in the sense that there are facts about the state that are non-localized--they aren't facts about any particular locality. That's why realism comes into play, though. Classical probability theory is also nonlocal in this sense: You can have a situation of the form:
  • Probability 1/2 that Alice has a left shoe and Bob has a right shoe
  • Probability 1/2 that Alice has a right shoe and Bob has a left shoe
That probability distribution is nonlocal in exactly the same sense the wave function is. However, in the case of classical probability theory, the probability distribution is (usually) not considered to be a property of the world, it's considered to be a property of our knowledge about the world.
 
  • Like
Likes Derek Potter and Demystifier
  • #41
Demystifier said:
Actually, they are. All mathematical approaches use a wave function (or something equivalent), and wave function for entangled particles is a nonlocal object. For a 2-particle entangled wave function ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2)##, you cannot say what is the value of wave function at the position ##{\bf x}_1##.

Exactly. Interpretations simply interpret the formalism - not change it.

All Bell is saying is if you want properties to exist independent of observation (technically called counterfactual definiteness - although its slightly more subtle than that - but no need to go into that here) then you must have non-locality. That's one reason I asked N88 to study my linked paper - it carefully explains the assumptions.

It applies to any interpretation - not just BM. BM has properties real at all times, so must be non local - which it explicitly is due to the pilot wave.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #42
bhobba said:
Exactly. Interpretations simply interpret the formalism - not change it.
Yes. And one possible attempt of interpretation is this: Wave function is nonlocal, but reality should be local, so wave function is not real.

But that's not enough. If one claims that wave function is not real, then one has to say what is real? One can be very flexible about that, but the Bell theorem says that, whatever one chooses to be real, it is almost inevitable that this reality will have some nonlocal features.
 
  • Like
Likes eloheim and bhobba
  • #43
Demystifier said:
Yes. And one possible attempt of interpretation is this: Wave function is nonlocal, but reality should be local, so wave function is not real.

Yes - but a (reasonably) obviously flawed one eg it does not follow from our current understanding of physics that reality must be local - only that its not possible to sync clocks FTL. However people are often not careful about that sort of thing and you get flawed arguments like that.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #44
The paper as well as Motl's attack is discussed in http://ilja-schmelzer.de/forum/showthread.php?tid=45 too.

N88 said:
But "realism" is (from my readings) the UNrealistic view that each photon had the "measured" polarisation before it was "measured". So, on this point, I find it best to stick to the Copenhagen interpretation and reject such false "realism" (such "quantum classicality") and retain locality in all its forms. So (I wonder):
Is the claimed "experimental nonlocality" a by-product of their Bohmian unrealism?
Is my subscription to "locality in all its forms" sustainable?
Your subscription to "locality in all forms" is unsustainable. Because you have to give up causality to preserve it (at least any meaningful notion of causality, in particular Reichenbach's principle of common cause). But in this case what remains of causality is reduced to signal causality (you cannot send signals faster than light), and this holds in non-local realistic interpretations too.

Thus, you give up a lot (realism, causality) but win nothing (the week causality you can preserve is not endangered anyway).

That one can really experimentally establish such nonlocal influences I doubt. Because dBB is an interpretation. And experiments supporting interpretations are, hm, ..., interpretations of the experiments.
 
  • Like
Likes Derek Potter
  • #45
bhobba said:
Its an interpretation so obviously has all the standard formalism.

If BM accept (unknown) trajectories, there wold be an associated set of orthogonal eigen vectors associated with each point of the trajectory. At every moment in the hilbert space the vector would have to skip to an orthogonal vector. This would imply collapse at every moment.
 
  • #46
naima said:
If BM accept (unknown) trajectories, there wold be an associated set of orthogonal eigen vectors associated with each point of the trajectory. At every moment in the hilbert space the vector would have to skip to an orthogonal vector. This would imply collapse at every moment.
Simply wrong. Learn de Broglie-Bohm theory before talking about it, sorry. In dBB theory there is no collapse at all, there is a wave function and a trajectory. Once the trajectory defines what we observe, there is no need to introduce any collapse - the wave function may present the cat in a superposition, the trajectory of the cat is what matters in reality.
 
  • #47
Please do not only say: Learn. If you know what is wrong about these othogonal vectors, tell it.
 
  • #48
I say "learn" because I have the impression that you know almost nothing about dBB theory. The wave function evolves in dBB theory following the same equation as in usual quantum theory, namely the Schrödinger equation. And without any collapse. So your "collapse at every moment" strongly suggest that you don't know even the basics of dBB theory. Sorry, but this is my impression based on your post. And the "learn" means that every introduction into dBB theory will tell you that you are wrong.
 
  • #49
naima said:
If BM accept (unknown) trajectories, there wold be an associated set of orthogonal eigen vectors associated with each point of the trajectory. At every moment in the hilbert space the vector would have to skip to an orthogonal vector. This would imply collapse at every moment.

As Ilja says that's incorrect:
http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0611032

Thanks
Bill
 
  • Like
Likes Demystifier
  • #50
Ilja said:
there is no need to introduce any collapse

Technically its because, in BM, after decoherence the mixed state is a proper mixed state.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #51
There are many things that i do not want to study. I do not want to waste time with the fractal QM of Nottale or to learn C++.
But when i wonder if there are recursive call in this language, i appreciate a yes/no answer.

My question was about the use of operators and eigenvectors in BM. Bhobba said that it is just an interpretation an thar it uses the Hilbert space machinary.
It seems that it is different. There a wave which obeys the Schrodinger equation but my question was mainly about the particles.
If there is no vector state in the Hilbert space associated to a position in the configuation space write it. Is there even a supperposition principle for particle states?
 
  • #52
naima said:
My question was about the use of operators and eigenvectors in BM. Bhobba said that it is just an interpretation an thar it uses the Hilbert space machinary.

Your error in logic is assuming that it doesn't have more than operators and Hilbert space machinery.

In BM the usual QM formalism emerges from its assumptions rather than simply being assumed. It also has a different interpretation eg its probabilistic nature is due to lack of knowledge of initial conditions rather than being inherent and you don't have improper mixed states, they are all proper.

That's what interpretations do - they add more stuff to the formalism, but the formalism doesn't change.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #53
Does it use superposition principle for particles? yes? no?
When you read a text it is not easy to find the words which are avoided
 
  • #54
naima said:
Does it use superposition principle for particles? yes? no?
When you read a text it is not easy to find the words which are avoided

The superposition principle is simply that states form a vector space. Since that is part of the standard QM machinery it must.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #55
naima said:
If there is no vector state in the Hilbert space associated to a position in the configuation space write it. Is there even a supperposition principle for particle states?
In Bohmian mechanics there is an eigenstate associated with the position operator, but there is no eigenstate associated with the actual position. Likewise, superposition principle is valid for wave functions, but not for actual positions. In Bohmian mechanics there are two kinds of "position" and your confusion seems to emerge from a failure to understand the difference between them.
 
  • Like
Likes bhobba, Derek Potter and Nugatory
  • #56
naima said:
Does it use superposition principle for particles? yes? no?
No. Only for wave functions.
 
  • #57
Demystifier said:
Likewise, superposition principle is valid for wave functions, but not for actual positions.
Thanks
So there is only superposition for the pilot wave.
 
  • #59
John Bell wrote a short article about the relationship between Bohmian mechanics and Many-Worlds that was kind of interesting. But here's my take on it:

Many-Worlds starts with the not-too-radical assumption that quantum mechanics (or rather, the Schrodinger equation) applies to arbitrarily large systems, such as the entire universe. So there is no "wave function collapse" if you include the entire universe as your "system". That means that there is no obvious way to interpret the wave function as giving probabilities (via the Born rule), because for the universe as a whole, there are no measurements performed.

Bohmian mechanics, in a way of looking at it, starts in the same place, with a wave function for the universe that evolves unitarily. But it doesn't consider this universal wave function to be "the world". Instead, the world is basically a point in 3N-dimensional configuration space (configuration space being the set of simultaneous positions of each of the N particles in the universe --- this description might only make sense nonrelativistically, where we can think of the number of particles in the universe as a constant). The role of the wave function, then, is to give a probability distribution for the location of the world in phase space.

As an aside---something that's aesthetically unpleasing to me about Bohmian mechanics is the fact that it lacks the symmetry of standard quantum mechanics. The way that standard quantum mechanics is formulated using Dirac's abstract bra-ket notation, there is a kind of "coordinate independence"; the formalism has the same form in any basis. So you don't have to consider configuration space to be primary, you can work in momentum space, or you can work in a basis of harmonic oscillator eigenstates, or you can assume the existence of abstract internal variables such as spin that have no translation into configuration space. In contrast, Bohmian mechanics insists that configuration space is what's "real". The Born probability rules applied to observables besides position are not considered fundamental; if the observable does not relate to position, then it has no direct physical meaning.

Here's where Bell departs from the usual Bohmian mechanics. For the usual formulation of Bohmian mechanics, the relationship between the wave function and a probability distribution in configuration space is dynamic: You assume that that is true initially, and you propose equations of motion for configuration space that preserves this relationship. What Bell pointed out is that trajectories in configuration space are not (directly) observable. The only thing you know about the past history of the universe is whatever is recorded in persistent records. But those persistent records are part of the present state of the universe. So there is a sense in which trajectories are redundant. In light of this, Bell proposed an interpretation of quantum mechanics that was a kind of unification of the Bohmian and Many-Worlds interpretations. In his unified interpretation, the only dynamics is the unitary evolution of the universal wave function. There is no secondary equations of motion for configuration space. Instead, he proposed that at each moment, the world had a probability of being at any point in configuration space, according to the Born rule. So there are no trajectories, the universe just hops from point to point in configuration space randomly.
 
  • #60
bhobba said:
… … I gave you the answer. I will repeat it. The spins are correlated that means you will get the same answer when multiplied regardless of outcome. It simple when you think about it. If you want me to go deeper you will need to explain precisely what you don't understand about it. The LHS is a statement about expectations. The RHS is what you must get regardless because the singlet state is 100% correlated.

But I again urge you to study the modern link I gave before delving into Bells paper.
Thanks, Bill

A. Delving into Bell's paper is neither relevant nor my intention here. But I again note that, despite my providing the context, you do not give me the way that you mathematically link the LHS to the RHS of Bell (1964), eqn (3). I expected your math would allow us to discuss where "non-locality" (allegedly) arises in such math.

B. As for the paper that you favour http://arxiv.org/pdf/1212.5214v2.pdf: it makes my point explicitly (p.2, with my emphasis):
"In other words, in a counterfactual-definite theory it is meaningful to assign a property to a system (e.g. the position of an electron) independently of whether the measurement of such property is carried out. [Sometime this counterfactual definiteness property is also called “realism”, but it is best to avoid such philosophically laden term to avoid misconceptions.]
Bell’s theorem can be phrased as “quantum mechanics cannot be both local and counterfactual-definite”. A logically equivalent way of stating it is “quantum mechanics is either non-local or non counterfactual-definite.”​

My interest is in learning about local and non counterfactual-definite QM.
 
  • #61
Demystifier said:
So you do accept that there is some extra entity, which here we call C, while Bell calls it ##\lambda##. And like Bell, you assume that this extra quantity is local. But unlike Bell, you don't see a contradiction with QM. Am I right?So are you questioning this particular mathematical step in the Bell's derivation? Fine, now we know where exactly do you disagree with Bell. But Eq. (3) is a consequence of standard QM. People, like Zeilinger, who question the Bell's conclusions, do not question Eq. (3). So are you sure that Eq. (3) is the crucial issue for you? In other words, if you could prove (3), would you then accept nonlocality?

Anyway, the proof of (3) is straightforward but slightly tedious and boring. So let me just give you a few hints. You should use the singlet state defined in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singlet_state
and properties of ##\sigma## matrices presented in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_matrices
I am NOT in any way questioning Bell (1964), equation (3). I was questioning the way that YOU personally fill in the missing details. So, to be clear: Are you saying that non-locality is implicit in the way Bell's equation (3) is worked out? If so, could you show me your calculation and where the non-locality arises? Thanks.
 
  • #62
N88 said:
But I again note that, despite my providing the context, you do not give me the way that you mathematically link the LHS to the RHS of Bell (1964), eqn (3)

Then you note wrong - I did. Why you don't get it beats me.

For the last time the LHS is the expectation of the multiple of the the outcomes. The outcomes are 100% correlated so regardless you get the RHS ie its independent of probabilities, this follows immediately from what an expectation is.

Dymystifyer told you, you can slog through the math if you like and do a tedious calculation. Do that if you don't get what I said. If you find that difficult then this is not the paper you should be studying - study the paper I suggested. If you want someone do actually do the calculation for you then start a separate thread - but don't be surprised if no one answers - most are like me and don't like doing and posting tedious calculations especially for things that are reasonably obvious. They will ask, at a minimum, for you to at least post your attempt at it and where you are stuck.

Thanks
Bill
 
Last edited:
  • #63
N88 said:
I am NOT in any way questioning Bell (1964), equation (3). I was questioning the way that YOU personally fill in the missing details. So, to be clear: Are you saying that non-locality is implicit in the way Bell's equation (3) is worked out? If so, could you show me your calculation and where the non-locality arises? Thanks.

It has nothing to do with locality. As has been explained to you, its simply the result of a tedious calculation from the formalism of QM, although the result is fairly obvious as I have indicated.

Its now rather obvious you do not have the background to understand the paper otherwise you would simply do the calculation and move on.

Thanks
Bill
 
Last edited:
  • #64
N88 said:
I am NOT in any way questioning Bell (1964), equation (3). I was questioning the way that YOU personally fill in the missing details. So, to be clear: Are you saying that non-locality is implicit in the way Bell's equation (3) is worked out? If so, could you show me your calculation and where the non-locality arises? Thanks.
Yes, the non-locality is implicit in equation (3). To make it explicit, one needs to make a few steps. Some of those steps may look obvious to you, but let me present them all just to be as explicit as possible.
- First, the notation <something> really means ##<\psi|something|\psi>##.
- Second, it is said that it is for the singlet state, which means
$$|\psi>=|\uparrow>|\downarrow>-|\downarrow>|\uparrow>$$
- Third, this ##|\psi>## cannot define the full wave function, because the full wave function depends also on positions. So the above is just a short-hand notation for something like
$$\psi({\bf x}_1, {\bf x}_2)=\psi_A({\bf x}_1)|\uparrow>\otimes\psi_B({\bf x}_2)|\downarrow>-
\psi_A({\bf x}_1)|\downarrow>\otimes\psi_B({\bf x}_2)|\uparrow>$$
- Forth, we see that it cannot be written in the form
$$\psi_A({\bf x}_1)|something_1>\otimes\psi_B({\bf x}_2)|something_2>$$
so we cannot say that the first particle is in the state ##\psi_A({\bf x}_1)|something_1>## and the second particle in the state ##\psi_B({\bf x}_2)|something _2>##. This means that we cannot say what is the state of the first particle at the position ##{\bf x}_1## or what is the state of the second particle at the position ##{\bf x}_2##. In other words, the description of the system by ##\psi({\bf x}_1, {\bf x}_2)## is not local.
 
Last edited:
  • #65
Demystifier said:
$$\psi({\bf x}_1, {\bf x}_2)=\psi_A({\bf x}_1)|\uparrow>\otimes\psi_B({\bf x}_2)|\downarrow>-

Hmmmm. I thought there should be a 1/root 2 there.

Also I don't think there is any locality or non locality involved in equation 3. I know exactly what you are saying eg (see post 22):
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/is-the-cat-alive-dead-both-or-unknown.819497/page-2

Its just basic QM.

To the OP the above math is rather close to the math in deriving equation 3 instead of just seeing it must be like that. If you still can't do it post your attempt.

Thanks
Bill
 
Last edited:
  • #66
bhobba said:
Hmmmm. I thought there should be a 1/root 2 there.
It should (my bad), but it's not important for understanding the origin of nonlocality.

bhobba said:
Also I don't think there is any locality or non locality involved in equation 3.
Then why did you like my post #38?
 
  • #67
Demystifier said:
Actually, they are. All mathematical approaches use a wave function (or something equivalent), and wave function for entangled particles is a nonlocal object. For a 2-particle entangled wave function ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2)##, you cannot say what is the value of wave function at the position ##{\bf x}_1##.
Demystifier said:
It should (my bad), but it's not important for understanding the origin of nonlocality.

Absolutely - its simply tedium.

Demystifier said:
Then why did you like my post #38?

For reference here is post 38
Demystifier said:
Actually, they are. All mathematical approaches use a wave function (or something equivalent), and wave function for entangled particles is a nonlocal object. For a 2-particle entangled wave function ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2)##, you cannot say what is the value of wave function at the position ##{\bf x}_1##.

My bad. I was responding to it being an entangled 'single' object and should have mentioned such doesn't really imply locality or non locality.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #68
bhobba said:
My bad. I was responding to it being an entangled 'single' object and should have mentioned such doesn't really imply locality or non locality.
So do you or do you not agree that entangled wave function by itself is a non-local object?

Of course, if you say that it is a non-local object, it does not mean that this implies that nature itself is non-local. For instance, the statistics of classical Bertlmann socks can be described by a non-local object, and yet the nature of Bertlmann socks is local. If wave function by itself is not a fundamental object, then the question of non-locality of nature is a question of non-locality of the fundamental objects, whatever they are. In the case of Bertlmann socks, the fundamental objects are the socks themselves, not their statistical description. The power of the Bell theorem is precisely in the fact that he does not assume that wave function is a fundamental object. Instead, fundamental objects in his theorem are some very general objects called ##\lambda##. His theorem refers to those general objects. If he assumed that wave function was a fundamental object, then the proof of non-locality of nature would be trivial. If wave function were fundamental, then my post #38 would already be a proof that nature is not local.
 
Last edited:
  • #69
Demystifier said:
If wave function by itself is not a fundamental object, then the question of non-locality of nature is a question of non-locality of the fundamental objects, whatever they are.

Ahhhh. Now I see your point. Yes its non local in your sense (ie the wave-function depends on both positions and in general can not be factored). But since the ontological status of a state the formalism is silent on its of no moment.

Thanks
Bill
 
  • #70
bhobba said:
Ahhhh. Now I see your point. Yes its non local in your sense (ie the wave-function depends on both positions and in general can not be factored). But since the ontological status of a state the formalism is silent on its of no moment.
Exactly!
 
  • Like
Likes bhobba
<h2>1. What is pilot wave theory?</h2><p>Pilot wave theory, also known as the de Broglie-Bohm theory, is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes that particles have both a physical position and a "pilot wave" that guides their motion. This theory suggests that the seemingly random behavior of particles in quantum mechanics can be explained by the interaction between the particle and its pilot wave.</p><h2>2. How does pilot wave theory differ from other interpretations of quantum mechanics?</h2><p>Unlike other interpretations, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, pilot wave theory does not involve the collapse of the wave function or the role of an observer. Instead, it suggests that particles have definite positions at all times and their behavior is determined by the interaction between the particle and its pilot wave.</p><h2>3. What is the new experimental support for pilot wave theory?</h2><p>In recent years, researchers have conducted experiments using tiny oil droplets on a vibrating fluid surface, which exhibit behavior similar to quantum particles. These experiments have shown that the behavior of these droplets can be explained by pilot wave theory, providing evidence for the validity of this interpretation of quantum mechanics.</p><h2>4. How does this new experimental support impact our understanding of quantum mechanics?</h2><p>The new experimental support for pilot wave theory challenges the traditional understanding of quantum mechanics, which has been the dominant interpretation for decades. It suggests that there may be alternative explanations for the behavior of particles at the quantum level, and opens up new avenues for further research and exploration.</p><h2>5. What are the potential implications of pilot wave theory for future technologies?</h2><p>If pilot wave theory is proven to be a valid interpretation of quantum mechanics, it could have significant implications for future technologies. For example, it could potentially lead to the development of new quantum computing methods that are more stable and reliable, as well as advancements in fields such as quantum cryptography and quantum communication.</p>

1. What is pilot wave theory?

Pilot wave theory, also known as the de Broglie-Bohm theory, is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes that particles have both a physical position and a "pilot wave" that guides their motion. This theory suggests that the seemingly random behavior of particles in quantum mechanics can be explained by the interaction between the particle and its pilot wave.

2. How does pilot wave theory differ from other interpretations of quantum mechanics?

Unlike other interpretations, such as the Copenhagen interpretation, pilot wave theory does not involve the collapse of the wave function or the role of an observer. Instead, it suggests that particles have definite positions at all times and their behavior is determined by the interaction between the particle and its pilot wave.

3. What is the new experimental support for pilot wave theory?

In recent years, researchers have conducted experiments using tiny oil droplets on a vibrating fluid surface, which exhibit behavior similar to quantum particles. These experiments have shown that the behavior of these droplets can be explained by pilot wave theory, providing evidence for the validity of this interpretation of quantum mechanics.

4. How does this new experimental support impact our understanding of quantum mechanics?

The new experimental support for pilot wave theory challenges the traditional understanding of quantum mechanics, which has been the dominant interpretation for decades. It suggests that there may be alternative explanations for the behavior of particles at the quantum level, and opens up new avenues for further research and exploration.

5. What are the potential implications of pilot wave theory for future technologies?

If pilot wave theory is proven to be a valid interpretation of quantum mechanics, it could have significant implications for future technologies. For example, it could potentially lead to the development of new quantum computing methods that are more stable and reliable, as well as advancements in fields such as quantum cryptography and quantum communication.

Similar threads

  • Quantum Physics
Replies
23
Views
3K
  • Quantum Physics
Replies
4
Views
1K
  • Quantum Interpretations and Foundations
Replies
14
Views
4K
  • Quantum Physics
2
Replies
47
Views
3K
  • Quantum Interpretations and Foundations
Replies
2
Views
646
  • Quantum Interpretations and Foundations
2
Replies
37
Views
1K
  • Quantum Interpretations and Foundations
4
Replies
138
Views
5K
Replies
11
Views
4K
  • Quantum Physics
5
Replies
165
Views
19K
Replies
6
Views
1K
Back
Top