Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics

by Nick Herbert

The same situation represented in configuration space looks like one wave in two dimensions: waves A and B are not separate but different aspects of a single waveshape.

Configuration space consists of three dimensions for each quon. Thus the proxy wave for the two-quon hydrogen atom (electron plus proton) resides in a space of six dimensions. The main reason that physicists consider the wave function to be fictitious is that it moves around in a space with many more dimensions than our own.

Erwin Schrödinger, is the strange action-at-a-distance such entangled systems seem to possess—at least on paper. Because of their phase-connectedness (or alternatively because they are represented by a single wave in multidimensional space) an action on quon A seems to have an instantaneous effect on the wave function of quon B even when the two quons are no longer capable of interacting via conventional forces.

he called it not one but the chief feature of quantum theory.

the fact that such a tight connection between separated quons exists in the formalism of quantum theory is no guarantee that such a connection exists in reality.

quantum theory does not seem to permit any messages to be sent along this link (see Eberhard’s proof in Chapter 13), a fact which heightens the impression that such links are spurious.

Heisenberg suggested that the wave function does not represent a real situation but rather our knowledge of a physical situation.

Wave function collapse is not an actual physical event but represents the change that occurs in our knowledge when we become aware of the result of a measurement.

The silver and gold coins are correlated but not connected.

No real link exists between them.

Instantaneous phase connections exist in the mathematics but not in the real world. You should not take them seriously.

Many entities that seem to exist are not part of the real world—for instance, the virtual image. A virtual image appears to be someplace where in fact it is not. A rainbow is a virtual image: it can seem to be located where there is neither rain nor sunlight.

“What we learn about,” says Heisenberg, “is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our methods of questioning.”

This suspicion that mathematical phase entanglement is evidence for a real world quantum connection was strengthened by John Bell’s discovery that quantum correlations are too strong to be explained by ordinary knowledge models of the silver/gold coin variety. Bell’s theorem, reviewed in Chapter 12, shows that to account for the behavior of certain two-photon systems, extremely drastic models of reality must be invoked, models that necessitate the real existence of a pervasive and powerful long-range connectedness.

Quantum Reality #4: The many-worlds interpretation.

Unlike any other interaction in nature, measurement has the power to collapse the wave function from many parallel possibilities (the premeasurement superposition of possibilities) to just one (the actual measurement result).

What is new in Everett’s model is that correlated to every one of these system wave functions is a different M-device waveform which records one of these attribute values. Thus if the measured attribute has five possible values, the quantum-entity-plus-measuring-device develops into five quantum systems, each with a different attribute value paired with five measuring devices each registering that value. Instead of collapsing from five possibilities to one actual outcome, the quantum system in Everett’s interpretation realizes all five outcomes.

Everett’s picture all measurement devices and measurement acts are fundamentally of the same nature as all other devices and acts. Strictly speaking, there are no “measurements” in the world, only correlations.

“It is not so much the system,” Everett says, “which is affected by an observation, as the observer who becomes correlated to the system.” The moral of Everett’s tale is plain: if you don’t want to split, stop looking at attribute-laden systems.

Quantum Reality #5: Quantum logic. (The world obeys a non-human kind of reasoning.)

Birkhoff and von Neumann show that because quantum attributes are represented by waveforms, they combine according to a peculiar “wave logic.”

mathematicians use a diagram called a lattice

the highest common attribute that can be reached by following lines downward from A and from B. For instance, the operation (cyan AND magenta) is calculated by following lattice lines down from the cyan and magenta attributes.

the OR operation on any pair of attributes A and B from a lattice diagram, find the lowest common attribute that can be reached by following lines upward from A and from B. For

All of a classical object’s attributes can be measured simultaneously: a classical object is completely open to view. A quantum entity is different: only a certain set of compatible attributes can be simultaneously measured.

Compatible attributes follow ordinary logic—a logic which reflects the “surface ordinariness” of quantum fact—the human condition repeatedly stressed by Bohr that everything we experience in this world must be describable in “classical”—that is, Boolean language.

However, relations between the Boolean isles do not satisfy the distributive law, which suggests that for quantum entities something is fishy about the connection between the whole and its parts.

David Finkelstein

In Finkelstein’s model, quons differ from classical objects not in how they possess their attributes but in how these attributes combine to make new attributes. Quantum entities possess classical attributes that obey a non-classical logic.

A quantum entity, on the other hand, follows “wave logic” and doesn’t have definite parts: it can break up in a great many different ways, as many ways as there are waveform alphabets into which its proxy wave can be analyzed. Each of these divisions yields a valid classical-style view of the quantum entity, but the connection between these ordinary views is governed by a wave logic whose image is not an assembly drawing but a non-distributive lattice.

THE THREE-POLARIZER PARADOX

Now place the D filter between the two crossed polarizers. As the D filter moves into place, light begins to shine through

The insertion of the third polarizer (D filter) absorbs S light out of the pure H beam. The removal of S light spoils the perfect destructive interference that yielded zero V light. The D light that’s left is half V light with nothing around to cancel it. This uncanceled V light is what gets through the second filter.

As these examples show, quantum attributes do not obey the laws of ordinary arithmetic but a peculiar kind of wave arithmetic.

A NON-BOOLEAN ROUNDUP

A photon’s attributes obey a non-human logic which we must learn to understand if we want to make sense of what’s really going on in the quantum world.

Quantum Reality #6: Neorealism. (The world is made of ordinary objects.)

Neorealists claim that the familiar objects that make up the everyday world are themselves made of ordinary objects; they believe, in short, that atoms are “things.”

“The ontology of materialism rested upon the illusion that the kind of existence, the direct ‘actuality’ of the world around us, can be extrapolated into the atomic range. This extrapolation, however, is impossible … Atoms are not things.”

This conclusion, known as von Neumann’s proof, strengthened the case for the prevailing Copenhagen view, considerably dampened physicists’ enthusiasm for neorealist heresies, and effectively closed off research into object-based models of the world for more than twenty years.

QUANTUM MONTE

Both quantum fact and quantum monte have the element of chance in common and the fact that each event that happens is, in itself, unremarkable (Cinderella effect). It’s the statistical pattern, in both cases, that gives the game away.

In both the card game and in the laboratory nothing is ultimately hidden: you can choose (meter option) to look at whatever you wish. However, every choice to look at one aspect necessarily entails not looking at something else.

DAVID BOHM’S ORDINARY-OBJECT MODEL OF THE ELECTRON

The electron senses what’s going on around it via a new kind of field called the “pilot wave.” Bohm’s pilot wave puts the electron in instant contact with every other particle in the universe.

Although Bohm’s electrons—“little superluminal chameleons”—are a kind of object that might conceivably underlie the quantum facts, Copenhagenists reject their existence on other grounds—namely, 1. “objects” should not be in touch with everything in the universe, and 2. especially not faster than light.

Bohm found he could explain the quantum facts with an underlying reality consisting of objects, but the bizarre properties of such objects dash any hope that Bohm’s solution represents a return to ordinary reality.

a necessary feature of any object-based model of reality and of many other models of reality as well.

Quantum Reality #7. (Consciousness creates reality.)

von Neumann concludes that, from a strictly logical point of view, only the presence of consciousness can solve the measurement problem.