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arXiv:1505.08104

Communicating the Heisenberg uncertainty relations: Niels Bohr, Complementarity and the Einstein-Rupp experiments

Jeroen van Dongen

Published May 29, 2015• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Einstein-Rupp experiments have been unduly neglected in the history of quantum mechanics. While this is to be explained by the fact that Emil Rupp was later exposed as a fraud and had fabricated the results, it is not justified, due to the importance attached to the experiments at the time. This paper discusses Rupp's fraud, the relation between Albert Einstein and Rupp, and the Einstein-Rupp experiments, and argues that these experiments were an influence on Niels Bohr's development of complementarity and Werner Heisenberg's formulation of the uncertainty relations.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1505.08104

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The Einstein-Rupp experiments have been unduly neglected in the history of quantum mechanics. While this is to be explained by the fact that Emil Rupp was later exposed as a fraud and had fabricated the results, it is not justified, due to the importance attached to the experiments at the time. This paper discusses Rupp's fraud, the relation between Albert Einstein and Rupp, and the Einstein-Rupp experiments, and argues that these experiments were an influence on Niels Bohr's development of complementarity and Werner Heisenberg's formulation of the uncertainty relations.
The Einstein-Rupp experiments were proposed in 1926 by Albert Einstein to study the wave versus particle nature of light. Einstein presented a theoretical analysis of these experiments to the Berlin Academy together with results of Emil Rupp, who claimed to have successfully carried them out. However, as the preceding paper has claimed (HSPS 37 Suppl. (2007), 73-121), Rupp's success was the result of scientific fraud. This paper will argue, after exploring their interpretation, that the experiments were a relevant part of the background to such celebrated contributions to quantum mechanics as Born's statistical interpretation of the wave function and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Yet, the Einstein-Rupp experiments have hardly received attention in the history of quantum mechanics literature. In part, this is a consequence of self-censorship in the physics community, enforced in the wake of the Rupp affair. Self-censorship among historians of physics may however also have played a role.
One of the various interpretations of quantum mechanics occupies a privileged position in the opinion of the majority of physicists. This is the Copenhagen view, which owes its fame and popularity not only to historical reasons but also to its simplicity and practical efficiency. As is well known, the Copenhagen outlook was elaborated collectively. Nevertheless, Niels Bohr's and W. Heisenberg's contributions should be singled out as particularly outstanding. This chapter describes two principles, which are in fact the two pillars on which Bohr's doctrine is built. These are: The working of measuring instruments must be accounted for in purely classical terms . Another one is quantum systems that should not even be thought of as possessing individual properties independently of the experimental arrangement. In the particular case of the pair of observables "position" and "momentum," the Heisenberg uncertainty relations can be considered as a generalization of the complementarity principle.
Niels Bohr’s complementarity principle is a tenuous synthesis of seemingly discrepant theoretical approaches (the wave mechanical approach, and that of Heisenberg and early Bohr) based on a comprehensive analysis of relevant experimental results. Yet the role of complementarity, and the experimentalist-minded approach behind it, were not confined to a provisional best-available synthesis of well-established experimental results alone. They were also pivotal in discovering and explaining the phenomenon of quantum tunneling in its various forms. The core principles of Bohr’s method and the ensuing complementarity account of quantum phenomena remain highly relevant guidelines in the current controversial debate and in experimental work on quantum tunneling times.
Abstract In his memoirs Heisenberg reports on his first encounter with Einstein in April 1926. He had been invited to present his work on quantum mechanics in the prestigious Berlin colloquium and after the talk they walked together to Einstein’s apartment. Einstein began the conversation by criticizing Heisenberg’s postulate that quantum mechanics must be based exclusively on quantities which are in principle observable (Episode 37). Astonished, Heisenberg remarked that he thought, just that had been Einstein’s approach in special relativity when giving up the concept of absolute time, Einstein replied [1]: ‘Probably I did use this kind of reasoning, but it is nonsense all the same [… ] In reality the opposite happens. It is the theory which decides what we can observe.’