Quantum Physics - a short introduction note: the following material is from the Graham Kendall's G.L.

K file collection The Founding Fathers The Copenhagen Interpretation Schrodinger's Cat The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox Bell's Inequality The Aspect Experiment Challenging Reality The Founding Fathers Unlike other physical theories, quantum mechanics was not the the invention of o ne or two scientists. Those who took part in its discovery are collectively call ed the founding fathers. Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Born, Jordan, Pauli , Fermi, Schrodinger, Dirac, de Broglie, Bose all made notable contributions. Du ring the first part of the 20th century scientists were faced with a range of ex traordinary physical phenomena showing the effects of quantum mechanics. They wo ndered whether the universe could really be as strange a place as their laborato ry experiments appeared to show. Bit by bit they pieced together the results of experiments and found rules obeyed by matter. In 1936 Birkhoff and Von Neumann c ollected the rules together into the accepted axioms of quantum mechanics. Birkhoff and Von Neumann showed that the axioms of quantum mechanics provide a c onsistent framework in which it is once again possible to predict the results of experiment, at least statistically. But, although these laws are mathematically consistent, most scientists agree that they are counter intuitive, and do not h ave any satisfactory known physical interpretation. The Copenhagen Interpretation Almost every text book on quantum mechanics claims to adopt the 'orthodox' Copen hagen interpretation, developed largely in a series of papers and lectures by Ni els Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, but it has never been entirely accepted. Its fun damental features are that a property does not exist unless it is measured, and that indeterminacy is a fundamental property of the universe. It side steps the issue of the collapse of the wave function by saying that it cannot be measured. The Copenhagen interpretation distinguishes between microscopic quantum system s, described by wave functions, and macroscopic measuring instruments, described by definite values. The quantum system triggers the measuring apparatus and, so mewhere in the chain of events, the wave function collapses. It does not answer the question of how to interpret the wave function, but says it is actually wron g to try; the world cannot be understood and the sole function of physics is to make experimentally verifiable predictions. It is easy to pick holes in the Copenhagen interpretation, and I do not believe that many first rank physicists find it convincing, though most try not to worry about it. First the distinction between microscopic and macroscopic systems is artificial. An objective description of nature should describe both systems as m atter obeying the same laws of physics. Many physicists see the conflict betwee n the probabilistic nature of microscopic physics and the determinist nature of macroscopic systems as the fundamental paradox of modern science. Second, by att ributing the collapse of the wave function to measurement, or to observation, th e Copenhagen interpretation becomes embroiled in philosophical knots. In quantum mechanics these problems have been nicely illustrated by the examples of Shrodi nger's cat and Wigner's friend. Schrodinger and Wigner produced these examples to show that it has to be nonsense to attribute the collapse of the wave functio n to observation. The problem is that, until now, no one has come up with a bet ter explanation. And yet, there is a huge body of experimental and mathematical evidence that the laws of quantum mechanics are obeyed, showing that quantum sta

tes have to be described by mixing the possible outcomes in a form of wave funct ion, which only collapses into a definite outcome when the observation takes pla ce. Schrodinger's Cat Schrodinger put a cat in a box with a capsule of cyanide which would be triggere d to break with a 50% chance by a quantum mechanical process, killing the cat. O h, all right, he didn't actually do it, but he thought about it. A physicist loo king at the box does not know whether the quantum process has broken the capsule or not, so he describes it with a quantum state, that is to say a wave function in which the process has part broken the cyanide capsule, and part not. If the wave function collapses when the observation takes place, then he should describ e the cat with a quantum state as well, in which the cat is part alive and despe rately trying to get out of the box before the cyanide gets him, and part dead a nd lying in a heap on the floor. The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Paradox (EPR) Although I have heard it said that the EPR paradox has been resolved by experime nt in favour of quantum mechanics, and against Einstein, it is actually a far mo re serious a paradox than Schrodinger's cat. It cannot be regarded as solved, be cause it apparently demonstrates a very deep conflict between relativity and qua ntum mechanics. Einstein, Rosen and Podolsky imagined that a quantum mechanical process generate s two particles flying in opposite directions with equal momenta. The momenta of the particles is not known, so the rules of quantum mechanics dictate that it i s governed by a wave function. The two particles become separated and then an ex periment is done to determine the momentum of one particle. According to conserv ation of momentum, the momentum of the other also becomes known at that precise point in time, so its state has been changed. Yet the separation between the par ticles implies that no influence can pass from one to the other. Einstein felt t hat "No reasonable definition of reality can permit this". The reason the EPR paradox is so severe is that the predictions of quantum mecha nics fly in flat contradiction to the laws of relativity, which are so solidly e stablished and so successfully built into the deepest form of quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics. Nonetheless recent experiments based on Bell's inequal ity support these predictions. Instantaneous action at a distance is prohibited by relativity because if anythi ng were to travel faster than the speed of light, then it would also have to be able to travel backwards in time. If two physicists each measure the momentum of one of the particle, then the one who measures his particle first causes the ot her physicist's results to change. But relativity tells us that, according to a moving observer, it was the second physicist who affected the results of the fir st. Einstein believed that some other process, such as a hidden variable, must dicta te the experimental result. A hidden variable is an unknown quantity which is de fined but which cannot be known, and which affects the results of the experiment without revealing its own value. Although David Bohm has produced a "hidden var iables" theory based on a form of hidden variable, it is also non-relativistic, non-local, and can hardly be taken seriously as an interpretation of quantum mec hanics. For practical reasons, the EPR paradox cannot be tested in exactly the experimen t suggested by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, but resolving it is of such importa nce that it has been developed, especially by John Bell, and tested experimental ly a number of times, most significantly by Alain Aspect. Bell's Inequality

John Bell imagined that instead of measuring equal and opposite momenta, a proce ss emits two particles with equal and opposite spin. Initially spin is not align ed, but it can be measured in each of the x, y and z directions. If the spin of a particle is measured, it aligns with the axis chosen for the measurement. This implies that the other particle must be aligned on the same axis, with opposite spin. Thus, the fact of a measurement of spin of one particle, will affect the results of a measurement spin of the other. Bell established a mathematical inequality which showed a bit more than this. If each particle can be regarded as a system in its own right, Bell showed that th e laws of quantum mechanics would be violated in experiments measuring the spin of each particle on different axes. Quantum mechanics predicts that the choice o f the axis for the first measurement of spin will alter the results of measureme nt of spin of the second particle, in a manner which is not consistent with the notion that the two particles have separated and become independent. The Aspect Experiment The experiment had been carried out a number of times and it has been found that Bell's inequality is violated, and the predictions of quantum mechanics support ed. It still left the possibility that the wave functions for both particles col lapsed at the time of the decision of which axis to use, and that as this took p lace before the experiment, nothing need to travel faster than the speed of ligh t. Alain Aspect and his colleagues in Paris set up the experiment in such a way tha t the decision on which direction to measure spin was made by a pseudorandom gen erator, after the particles were emitted. They still found that Bell's inequalit y was violated and that the decision on which direction to measure spin of one p article changed the results of the measurement of the other, even though a messa ge from the point where the decision was made to the second particle would have to travel faster than the speed of light. The paradox only occurs when two particles are connected by a causal event; here they are emitted by a process which dictates that they have opposite spin. The measurement of the spin of A affects the measurement of the spin of B., even tho ugh a message from A to B would have to travel faster than light. A curious feat ure of the correlation is that no information travels from the results of one me asurement to the other. You have to bring both sets of results together and com pare the correlations between the results and the directions chosen to establish that Bell's inequality is violated. The question really is, if nothing travels faster than light, how can the correlation come about? Challenging Reality The issues involved in the paradoxes centre on the collapse of the wave function , and the statement that a property does not exist unless it is measured. This h as been taken to imply that there is no physical reality, or that consciousness is responsible for the physical properties of matter, and even to suggest that e lectrons could not have existed before Thomson discovered them. Ultimately one m ight conclude that the world was flat until the discovery of America. The issue then would be whether it was Columbus who was responsible for the change, or whe ther it was the American Indians, or even whether they lived in thesame universe . Accept it philosophically? In the current state of philosophy of science, it seems that most philosophers m aintain that it is not possible for science to deliver truth. I think they would say that the paradoxes do not need resolution because, as a matter of principle , the universe cannot be understood.

I take an opposite view. In my Quantum Mechanics Primer I will show that these p aradoxes are not evidence that the universe behaves in an incomprehensible manne r, but are the inevitable, if unexpected, consequence of a true understanding of the nature of science and measurement. Wave Particle Duality According to the usual interpretation of quantum mechanics, the fundamental buil ding blocks of matter are neither wave nor particle, but some inexplicable combi nation of wave and particle. Whenever we measure the position of a particle it a ppears as a hard point-like object with a precise position in space. But when le ft to its own devices, the evolution of the particle is described by the laws of wave mechanics. Quantum mechanics seems to contradict the idea that, prior to measurement, a particle is a point-like object with an unknown position, and app ears to say that the particle is actually a wave spread over space. Polarization correlation A pair of quantum-entangled or conjugate particles are created. Polarization is typically assayed (the particles must possess orthogonal polarizations, but which is which?). It is the Bell Inequality appli ed to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. If you measure one particle's polarization the other particle's polarization is fixed, yet neither particle ha s any polarization until you look (superposition of states). So you measure a s parse stream of entangled photons at widely separated points (your measurement i nterval being less than the distance divided by lightspeed) then get together an d compare notes. Has this phenomena ever been proven in an experiment? Many, many times, including one lovely test in Europe where a new fiberoptic cab le was used before it was commissioned for a phone company to separate entangled photons by some 30 km before their wavefunction was collapsed by observation. Quantum mechanics won - instantaneous correlation when the datasets were later c ompared. Quantum eraser experiments do a similar trick: the effect (classical or non-cla ssical behavior at a double slit or equivalent) preceeds the cause (look or don' t look behind the slit). Even more disturbing, you can look and get classical r esults, then lose the data and the pattern reverts to the usual double slit one. How do the particles know? If was possible to create stable particles such as these couldn't these particl es be used in some kind of a device for faster than light communications? Absolutey not. It can be shown that no information is transferred, nor can it b e. How could the above be possible and not violate the laws of relativity? No superluminal information can be transferred. There is no contradiction.