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Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics

Uncertainty in Bohr's response to the Heisenberg microscope

Scott Tanona

Published Jul 8, 2004• 25 citations
Publisher
DOI
10.1016/j.shpsb.2004.04.007

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The results of Bohr model can be used to explain the motion of macroscopic objects or big objects (like orbiting planets and sun, falling stone etc.). These macroscopic objects have essentially a particle nature and Newtonian laws of motion can be applied on them. But it fails when applied to explain the motion of microscopic objects or small objects (like electrons, atoms, molecules etc.). This is because: According to Bohr model, an orbit is a well-defined path and this path can completely be defined only if both the position and velocity of the electron are known exactly at the same time. But this is not possible according to the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Thus, Bohr model contradicts the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle . According to Bohr model, an electron is regarded as a charged particle moving in well-defined circular orbits concentric about the nucleus. The wave character of the electron is not considered. Thus, Bohr model ignores the de-Broglie dual nature of matter .
The Heisenberg microscope provides a powerful mental image of the measurement process of quantum mechanics (QM), attempting to explain the uncertainty relation through an uncontrollable backaction from the measurement device. However, Heisenberg's proposed backaction uses features that are not present in the QM description of the world, and according to Bohr not present in the world. Therefore, Bohr argues, the mental image proposed by Heisenberg should be avoided. Later developments by Bell and Kochen-Specker show that a model that contains the features used for the Heisenberg microscope is in principle possible but must necessarily be nonlocal and contextual. In this paper we will reexamine the measurement process within a restriction of QM known as Stabilizer QM (SQM), that still exhibits, for example, Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger nonlocality and Peres-Mermin contextuality. The reexamination will use a recent extension of SQM, the Contextual Ontological Model (COM), where the system state gives a complete description of future measurement outcomes reproducing the quantum predictions, including the mentioned phenomena. We will see that the resulting contextual Heisenberg microscope backaction can be completely described within COM, and that the associated randomness originates in the initial state of the pointer system, exactly as in the original description of the Heisenberg microscope. The presence of contextuality, usually seen as prohibiting ontological models, suggests that the contextual Heisenberg microscope picture could perhaps be enabled in general QM.