The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

[lucas_]

Why aren't you guys discussing this? http://de.arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548

The paper is 259 pages. And it will take me a year to read it.

The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics doesn't use any wave function.
Just please tell me. How does it explain for example the double slit experiment?

 

[fresh_42]

Here is the corresponding book (€ 52 as book - free pdf to download):
https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9783319412849

This book presents the deterministic view of quantum mechanics developed by Nobel Laureate Gerard 't Hooft.

Dissatisfied with the uncomfortable gaps in the way conventional quantum mechanics meshes with the classical world, 't Hooft has revived the old hidden variable ideas, but now in a much more systematic way than usual. In this, quantum mechanics is viewed as a tool rather than a theory.

The author gives examples of models that are classical in essence, but can be analysed by the use of quantum techniques, and argues that even the Standard Model, together with gravitational interactions, might be viewed as a quantum mechanical approach to analysing a system that could be classical at its core. He shows how this approach, even though it is based on hidden variables, can be plausibly reconciled with Bell's theorem, and how the usual objections voiced against the idea of ‘superdeterminism' can be overcome, at least in principle.
This framework elegantly explains - and automatically cures - the problems of the wave function collapse and the measurement problem. Even the existence of an “arrow of time" can perhaps be explained in a more elegant way than usual. As well as reviewing the author’s earlier work in the field, the book also contains many new observations and calculations. It provides stimulating reading for all physicists working on the foundations of quantum theory.

 

[Demystifier]

The paper is 259 pages. And it will take me a year to read it.

Why do you need more than a day to read one page?

 

[Demystifier]

Just please tell me. How does it explain for example the double slit experiment?

I bet that no one here will be able to answer this one.

 

[DrChinese]

I could not find hardly anything on Bell (it is mentioned as being "interesting"). Without addressing that directly and in a manner suitable to convince us what it is not an issue, I don't see how it can be seriously considered. After all, he claims his interpretation is local realistic. He recognizes the issue, but fails to address it in a manner useful to anyone with a degree of skepticism:

"As for ‘entangled particles’, since it is known how to produce such states in practice, their odd-looking behaviour must be completely taken care of in our approach.

But the word "entanglement" is mentioned only twice, and only as part of a section on superdeterminism. Around page 39, he discusses the traditional problem and basically asserts that Alice and Bob are not free when they choose their measurement settings. Amazing that the many experiments that have been done to demonstrate that settings can be changed non-locally and mid-flight are completely dismissed by saying that we were all created by the big bang and are controlled by the same physics. (How this is anything but circular escapes me - that same argument could justify any speculative idea.)

"How can we deny Alice and/or Bob their free will? Well, precisely in a deterministic hidden variable theory, Alice and Bob can only change their minds about the setting of their polarisers, if their brains follow different laws than they did before, and, like it or not, Alice’s and Bob’s actions are determined by laws of physics, even if these are only local laws. Their decisions, logically, have their roots in the distant past, going back all the way to the Big Bang. So why should we believe that they can do counterfactual observations?"

I don't consider superdeterminism a theory, and it is not presented in any manner consistent with modern notions of experiment (it's as if nothing new occurred in the last 25 years: GHZ, closing loopholes, entanglement swapping, etc).

And at 250+ pages, it's a big ask. To say I'm disappointed in this work would be an understatement. (I'd seen it previously.)

 

[CarlB]

Why aren't you guys discussing this? http://de.arxiv.org/abs/1405.1548
The Cellular Automaton Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics doesn't use any wave function.
Just please tell me. How does it explain for example the double slit experiment?

In 1994, Iwo Bialynicki-Birula published a paper (Phys.Rev. D49 (1994) 6920-6927 or
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9304070 ) that gave a quantum cellular automata model that does the Dirac wave equation (in the long wave length or "continuum" approximation). So sure, add some boundary stuff and initial conditions and you will model the double slit experiment.

The odd thing about this is that the Dirac wave equation doesn't have a preferred orientation but a cellular automata on a crystal lattices (Iwo uses BCC cubic) does. The orientation disappears in the long wavelength limit.

However, one would expect that the crystal lattice would leave high energy (short wave length) effects. And certainly the fermions would be subject to being irreducible representations of the lattice symmetry (but from the point of view of the Dirac equation rather than the particles). This raises the question, "can the standard model SU(3)xSU(2)xU(1) symmetry be derived from a crystal symmetry?"

 

[Demystifier]

In 1994, Iwo Bialynicki-Birula published a paper (Phys.Rev. D49 (1994) 6920-6927 or
https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/9304070 ) that gave a quantum cellular automata model that does the Dirac wave equation (in the long wave length or "continuum" approximation). So sure, add some boundary stuff and initial conditions and you will model the double slit experiment.

Sure, you can model the double sit experiment in this way, but you cannot explain the double slit experiment in the sense in which the cellular automation interpretation of QM is supposed to explain QM. The paper above says absolutely nothing about quantum interpretations. The paper assumes from the beginning that there is a wave function as a fundamental object, without attempting to explain the origin of wave function from some more fundamental hidden variables. In particular, the paper cannot explain where does the wave function "collapse" come from or elucidate the measurement problem in any other way.

To conclude, whatever the value of the paper might be, in the context of this thread the paper is completely irrelevant.

 

[Lord Jestocost]

I don't consider superdeterminism a theory,...

In his book “Dance of the photons”, Anton Zeilinger remarks the following:

“The second important property of the world that we always implicitly assume is the freedom of the individual experimentalist. This is the assumption of free will. It is a free decision what measurement one wants to perform. In the experiment on the entangled pair of photons, Alice and Bob are free to choose the position of the switch that determines which measurement is performed on their respective particles. It was a basic assumption in our discussion that that choice is not determined from the outside. This fundamental assumption is essential to doing science. If this were not true, then, I suggest, it would make no sense at all to ask nature questions in an experiment, since then nature could determine what our questions are, and that could guide our questions such that we arrive at a false picture of nature.”