This chapter derives the properties of light from the properties of processing, including its ability to be both a wave and a particle, to respond to objects it doesn't physically touch, to take all paths to a destination, to choose a route after it arrives, and to spin both ways at once as it moves. Here a photon is an entity program spreading as a processing wave of instances. It becomes a "particle" if any part of it overloads the grid network that runs it, causing the photon program to reboot and restart at a new node. The "collapse of the wave function" is how quantum processing creates what we call a physical photon. This informational approach gives insights into issues like the law of least action, entanglement, superposition, counterfactuals, the holographic principle and the measurement problem. The conceptual cost is that physical reality is a quantum processing output, i.e. virtual.
This chapter derives the properties of light from the properties of processing, including its ability to be both a wave and a particle, to respond to objects it doesn't physically touch, to take all paths to a destination, to choose a route after it arrives, and to spin both ways at once as it moves. Here a photon is an entity program spreading as a processing wave of instances. It becomes a "particle" if any part of it overloads the grid network that runs it, causing the photon program to reboot and restart at a new node. The "collapse of the wave function" is how quantum processing creates what we call a physical photon. This informational approach gives insights into issues like the law of least action, entanglement, superposition, counterfactuals, the holographic principle and the measurement problem. The conceptual cost is that physical reality is a quantum processing output, i.e. virtual.
The previous chapter surveyed part of the rich variety of physical phenomena that can be understood using the ideas of quantum physics. Now that we are beginning the task of looking more deeply into the subject we shall find it useful to concentrate on examples that are comparatively simple to understand but which still illustrate the fundamental principles and highlight the basic conceptual problems. Some years ago most writers discussing such topics would probably have turned to the example of a ‘particle’ passing through a two-slit apparatus (as in Figure 1.2), whose wave properties are revealed in the interference pattern. Much of the discussion would have been in terms of wave–particle duality and the problems involved in position and momentum measurements, as in the discussion of the uncertainty principle in the last chapter. However, there are essentially an infinite number of places where the particle can be and an infinite number of possible values of its momentum, and this complicates the discussion considerably. We can illustrate all the points of principle we want to discuss by considering situations where a measurement has only a small number of possible outcomes. One such quantity relating to the physics of light beams and photons is known as polarisation . In the next section we discuss it in the context of the classical wave theory of light, and the rest of the chapter extends the concept to situations where the photon nature of light is important.
Short Abstract This paper reexamines the wave–particle duality of photons and the quantum measurement problem, not as deficiencies in physical laws or mathematical formalism, but as consequences of a conceptual conflation between two different hierarchical levels: existence and observation (record). In conventional quantum theory, wave-like phenomena such as interference and diffraction and discrete detection events have been interpreted within the same conceptual level, leading to the widespread notion that “a photon is both a wave and a particle.” However, this interpretation contains an intrinsic conceptual tension arising from projecting the form of observational results directly onto the mode of existence. In this study, observation is defined as a process in which a portion of an ongoing physical process becomes fixed as a discrete record through interaction with a measuring apparatus. By introducing a clear distinction between existence (continuous processes) and record (discrete outcomes), the photon’s wave nature is reinterpreted as its mode of propagation, while its particle-like character is understood as a property of the detection and recording process. Accordingly, wave–particle duality is not treated as a mysterious property of nature, but as a pseudo-problem produced by mixing descriptive levels. Likewise, wave function collapse and the idea that observation determines reality can be reinterpreted as updates of recorded information rather than physical changes in existence. This paper does not modify the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics; instead, it aims to improve interpretational clarity through conceptual reorganization and proposes a framework contributing to foundational discussions in quantum theory. https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1530-4234 Matsuoka × GPT Thought-Experiment Lab Japanese Abstract 本論文は、フォトンの波動粒子二重性および量子測定問題を、物理法則や数理構造の不備としてではなく、存在と観測(記録)という異なる概念階層の混同から生じた問題として再定式化することを目的とする。従来の量子論では、干渉・回折といった波動的現象と、検出における離散的事象が同一階層で解釈されてきた結果、「フォトンは波でもあり粒子でもある」という二重性概念が定着した。しかしこの理解は、観測結果の形式を存在様式へ直接投影したことに起因する概念的緊張を含んでいる。 本論文では、観測を「物理過程の一部が測定装置によって離散的記録として固定化される過程」と定義し、「存在(連続的過程)」と「記録(離散的結果)」を明確に区別する枠組みを導入する。この枠組みに基づき、フォトンの波動性は伝播過程における存在様式、粒子性は検出・記録過程における表現形式として再定義される。したがって波動粒子二重性は自然界の不可解な性質ではなく、記述階層の混同から生じた擬似問題として理解される。 同様に、量子測定問題における波動関数収縮や「観測が実在を決定する」という描像も、存在変化ではなく記録更新として再解釈可能である。本論文は量子論の数理構造を変更するものではなく、概念的整理を通じて解釈上の透明性を高めることを目的とするものであり、量子論の基礎的議論における一つの枠組みを提示する。
The previous chapter surveyed part of the rich variety of physical phenomena that can be understood using the ideas of quantum physics. Now that we are beginning the task of looking more deeply into the subject we shall find it useful to concentrate on examples that are comparatively simple to understand but which still illustrate the fundamental principles and highlight the basic conceptual problems. Some years ago most writers discussing such topics would probably have turned to the example of a ‘particle’ passing through a two-slit apparatus (as in Figure 1.2), whose wave properties are revealed in the interference pattern. Much of the discussion would have been in terms of wave–particle duality and the problems involved in position and momentum measurements, as in the discussion of the uncertainty principle in the last chapter. However, there are essentially an infinite number of places where the particle can be and an infinite number of possible values of its momentum, and this complicates the discussion considerably. We can illustrate all the points of principle we want to discuss by considering situations where a measurement has only a small number of possible outcomes. One such quantity relating to the physics of light beams and photons is known as polarisation . In the next section we discuss it in the context of the classical wave theory of light, and the rest of the chapter extends the concept to situations where the photon nature of light is important.
This chapter introduces quantum mechanics through the experimental discoveries that revealed the limits of classical physics. Beginning with the historical debate over whether light is a wave or a particle, it examines Young’s double-slit experiment and its modern single-particle versions, which demonstrate that quantum objects can exist in superpositions of mutually exclusive states. The chapter explains how interference arises when alternative possibilities are not measured and how interaction with the environment suppresses these effects through decoherence, giving rise to classical behavior at macroscopic scales. A sequence of thought experiments involving interferometers and Stern–Gerlach devices highlights the counterintuitive structure of quantum measurement and the incompatibility of certain physical properties, as captured by the uncertainty principle. The chapter emphasizes that quantum mechanics does not describe particles taking multiple paths simultaneously in a classical sense but rather requires a new framework for probability based on amplitudes and interference. Finally, the discussion connects these foundational ideas to emerging technologies such as quantum computing, showing how superposition and entanglement can be harnessed to perform computations that have no classical analogue.
We take our world to be an objective reality, but is it? The assumption that the physical world exists in and of itself has struggled to assimilate the findings of modern physics for some time now. For example, an objective space and time would just "be", but in relativity, space contracts and time dilates. Likewise objective "things" should just inherently exist, but the entities of quantum theory are probability of existence smears, that spread, tunnel, superpose and entangle in physically impossible ways. Cosmology even tells us that our entire physical universe just "popped up", from nowhere, about 14 billion years ago. This is not how an objectively real world should behave! Yet traditional alternatives don't work much better. That the world is just an illusion of the mind doesn't explain its consistent realism and Descartes dualism, that another reality beyond the physical exists, just doubles the existential problem. It is time to consider an option we might normally dismiss out of hand. This essay explores the virtual reality conjecture, that the physical world is the digital output of non-physical quantum processing. It finds it neither illogical, nor unscientific, nor incompatible with current physics. In this model, quantum entities are programs, movement is the transfer of processing, interactions are processing overloads and the fields of physics are network properties. It has no empty space, no singularities and all the conservations of physics just conserve processing. Its prediction, that the collision of high frequency light in a vacuum can create permanent matter, will test it. If the physical world has the properties of a processing output, physics must rewrite the story behind its equations.
In quantum mechanics, light cannot be described in terms of waves and particles at the same time. However, the question about light "as it really is" implies a description that is independent from the constraints of measurement. It is rather preferable to incorporate both aspects in a causal ontological theory, especially if it simplifies explanation and improves predictions. Hence, the photon can be described as an extended longitudinal association of discrete indivisible constituents, which are held together by the effect of their own waves on each other. The same waves can then be used to interpret the force of interactions between different pulses of light, or between light and matter. The concept of wavemediated interaction between sub-photonic entities is entirely consistent with the observations of quantum mechanics. The key is to assume that elementary sources of waves never collide, and that they have constant parameters. Novel experimental implications follow from this approach. For example, the speed of propagation of changes within magnetic or electrostatic fields may not be equal to the speed of light. Also, interference fringes should be detectable beyond the volume of overlap of two non-entangled beams, but only in special experimental settings.