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arXiv:1112.4045 · Open Physics

Using simple elastic bands to explain quantum mechanics: a conceptual review of two of Aerts’ machine-models

Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi

Published Dec 6, 2012• 20 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract From the beginning of his research, the Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts has shown great creativity in inventing a number of concrete machine-models that have played an important role in the development of general mathematical and conceptual formalisms for the description of the physical reality. These models can also be used to demystify much of the strangeness in the behavior of quantum entities, by allowing to have a peek at what’s going on behind the “quantum scenes,” during a measurement. In this author’s view, the importance of these machine-models, and of the approaches they have originated, have been so far seriously underappreciated by the physics community, despite their success in clarifying many challenges of quantum physics. To fill this gap, and encourage a greater number of researchers to take cognizance of the important work of so-called Geneva-Brussels school, we describe and analyze in this paper two of Aerts’ historical machine-models, whose operations are based on simple breakable elastic bands. The first one, called the spin quantum-machine, is able to replicate the quantum probabilities associated with the spin measurement of a spin-1/2 entity. The second one, called the connected vessels of water model (of which we shall present here an alternative version based on elastics) is able to violate Bell’s inequality, as coincidence measurements on entangled states can do.

DOI
10.2478/s11534-012-0164-2

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Abstract From the beginning of his research, the Belgian physicist Diederik Aerts has shown great creativity in inventing a number of concrete machine-models that have played an important role in the development of general mathematical and conceptual formalisms for the description of the physical reality. These models can also be used to demystify much of the strangeness in the behavior of quantum entities, by allowing to have a peek at what’s going on behind the “quantum scenes,” during a measurement. In this author’s view, the importance of these machine-models, and of the approaches they have originated, have been so far seriously underappreciated by the physics community, despite their success in clarifying many challenges of quantum physics. To fill this gap, and encourage a greater number of researchers to take cognizance of the important work of so-called Geneva-Brussels school, we describe and analyze in this paper two of Aerts’ historical machine-models, whose operations are based on simple breakable elastic bands. The first one, called the spin quantum-machine, is able to replicate the quantum probabilities associated with the spin measurement of a spin-1/2 entity. The second one, called the connected vessels of water model (of which we shall present here an alternative version based on elastics) is able to violate Bell’s inequality, as coincidence measurements on entangled states can do.
In the Brussels’ operational-realistic approach to cognition, concepts are treated as entities that can be in different states and be subjected to measurements performed by human minds. The Brussels group also considered two other examples of bipartite systems, the famous Bohm-EPR state of two spin-1/2 particles forming a singlet state (microscopic level) and a model of breakable elastic bands (macroscopic level) to show that they violate Bell-CHSH inequalities. Sandeau et al. employed entangled states of classical Maxwell fields coupling the polarization and spatial parity degrees of freedom in order to implement the analogue of non-unitary transformations, leading to maximal correlations beyond Tsirelson’s bound. Their approach relies on the realization at the level of classical Maxwell fields of a so-called positive operator valued measure. POVM stands for ‘positive operator valued measure’. They are the most general kinds of measurement. In standard quantum mechanics one uses ideal measurements which are one-dimensional projection operators.
This paper aims at reproducing quantum mechanical (QM) spin and spin entanglement results using a realist, stochastic, and local approach, without the standard QM mathematical formulation. The concrete model proposed includes the description of Stern–Gerlach apparatuses and of Bell test experiments. Single particle trajectories are explicitly evaluated as a function of a few stochastic variables that they assumedly carry on. QM predictions are retrieved as probability distributions of similarly-prepared ensembles of particles. Notably, it is shown that the proposed model, despite being both local and realist, is able to violate the Bell–CHSH inequalities by exploiting the coincidence loophole and thus intrinsically renouncing to one of the Bell’s assumptions.
i) The mechanics of higher order parametric amplifiers is studied. It is shown that these devices produce meaningful states; numerical calculations are performed that demonstrate the convergence of matrix elements associated with these states. Further, the correspondence between the classical and evolution for these devices is studied and the differences explained by a kind of quantum diffusion. Finally, the possibility of producing ordinary squeezed light with these devices is noted. ii) The generation of squeezed light always involves some scheme that amounts to pumping electromagnetic modes at near twice their natural frequency. When the pump is itself treated mechanically, extra noise is introduced that ultimately limits the amount of squeezing achievable. Detailed calculations are carried out in this regard for the parametric amplifier. It is found that the pump's initial phase noise is responsible for this limit. iii) Quantum-mechanical measurements are usually described by applying the standard rules to a measurement model. They can also be described by a formalism that uses mathematical objects called Effects and Operations. These two descriptions should be equivalent. D'Espagnat has raised a question about the usage of this formalism of Effects and Operations for repeated measurements. This question is cleared up, and the source of the discrepancy is given a simple interpretation. iv) Usually, an inequality that is chained becomes a weaker inequality. Chaining the Bell inequality, however, leads to stronger violations by mechanics. Further, a new kind of Bell inequality, based on the information obtained in a measurement, is derived. This information Bell inequality can be used to formulate tests of local realism in very general circumstances, e.g., higher spin versions of the EPR experiment. These new inequalities yield an interpretation for the size of their violation and lead to the formulation of a hierarchy of Bell inequalities for which two-particle Bell inequalities play a special role.
In the first half of this two-part article (Aerts et al. in Found Sci. doi: 10.1007/s10699-017-9528-9 , 2017b), we analyzed a cognitive psychology experiment where participants were asked to select pairs of directions that they considered to be the best example of Two Different Wind Directions, and showed that the data violate the CHSH version of Bell’s inequality, with same magnitude as in typical Bell-test experiments in physics. In this second part, we complete our analysis by presenting a symmetrized version of the experiment, still violating the CHSH inequality but now also obeying the marginal law, for which we provide a full quantum modeling in Hilbert space, using a singlet state and suitably chosen product measurements. We also address some of the criticisms that have been recently directed at experiments of this kind, according to which they would not highlight the presence of genuine forms of entanglement. We explain that these criticisms are based on a view of entanglement that is too restrictive, thus unable to capture all possible ways physical and conceptual entities can connect and form systems behaving as a whole. We also provide an example of a mechanical model showing that the violations of the marginal law and Bell inequalities are generally to be associated with different mechanisms.
Quantum mechanics is an immensely successful theory, occupying a unique position in the history of science. It has solved mysteries ranging from macroscopic superconductivity to the microscopic theory of elementary particles and has provided deep insights into the nature of vacuum on the one hand and the description of the nucleon on the other. Whole new fields such as quantum optics and quantum electronics owe their very existence to this body of knowledge. However, despite the stunning successes of quantum mechanics, there is no general agreement on the conceptual foundations and interpretation of the subject. The theory provides unambiguous information about the outcome of a measurement of a physical object. However, many feel that it does not provide a satisfactory answer to the nature of the “reality” we should attribute to the physical objects between the acts of measurement. The conceptual difficulty comes about because the wave function |ψ〉 is usually given by a coherent superposition of various distinguishable experimental outcomes. If we denote the collection of states that represent the possible outcomes of an experiment by |ψ j 〉, then |ψ〉 = ∑ j c j |ψ j 〉 where c j = 〈ψ j |ψ〉. The probability of the outcome |ψ j 〉 is P j =|c j | 2 . In the process of measurement, the so called collapse of the wave function takes place and a single, definite state |ψ i 〉 of the physical object is chosen. The difficulty comes about in the interpretation of the mechanism by which this definite state is chosen from amongst all the possible outcomes.