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Radiation effects and defects in solids

Self field electromagnetism and quantum phenomena

Kenneth Howard Schatten

Published Jul 1, 1994• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) has been extremely successful inits predictive capability for atomic phenomena. Thus the greatest hope for any alternative view is solely to mimic the predictive capability of quantum mechanics (QM), and perhaps its usefulness will lie in gaining a better understanding of microscopic phenomena. Many “paradoxes” and problematic situations emerge in QED. To combat the QED problems, the field of Stochastics Electrodynamics (SE) emerged, wherein a random “zero point radiation” is assumed to fill all of space in an attmept to explain quantum phenomena, without some of the paradoxical concerns. SE, however, has greater failings. One is that the electromagnetic field energy must be infinit eto work. We have examined a deterministic side branch of SE, “self field” electrodynamics, which may overcome the probelms of SE. Self field electrodynamics (SFE) utilizes the chaotic nature of electromagnetic emissions, as charges lose energy near atomic dimensions, to try to understand and mimic quantum phenomena. These fields and charges can “interact with themselves” in a non-linear fashion, and may thereby explain many quantum phenomena from a semi-classical viewpoint. Referred to as self fields, they have gone by other names in the literature: “evanesccent radiation”, “virtual photons”, and “vacuum fluctuations”. Using self fields, we discuss the uncertainty principles, the Casimir effects, and the black-body radiation spectrum, diffraction and interference effects, Schrodinger's equation, Planck's constant, and the nature of the electron and how they might be understood in the present framework. No new theory could ever replace QED. The self field view (if correct) would, at best, only serve to provide some understanding of the processes by which strange quantum phenomena occur at the atomic level. We discuss possible areas where experiments might be employed to test SFE, and areas where future work may lie.

DOI
10.1080/10420159108220507

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I propose that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and quantum phenomena derive from the existence of real vacuum stochastic fields filling space. I revisit stochastic electrodynamics (SED), a theory that studies classical systems of electrically charged particles immersed in an electromagnetic (zeropoint) radiation field with spectral density proportional to the cube of the frequency, Planck's constant appearing as the parameter fixing the scale. Asides from briefly reviewing known results, I make a detailed comparison between SED and quantum mechanics. Both theories make the same predictions when the stochastic equations of motion are of first order in Planck constant, but not in general. I propose that SED provides a clue for a realistic interpretation of quantum theory.

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The article “Insights from the classical atom,” by Petar Grujić and Nenad Simonović (Physics Today, May 2012, page 41), was interesting but incomplete. It left out stochastic electrodynamics (SED), an approach to classical mechanics that includes the effects of a proposed zero-point radiation background.The zero-point radiation is a Lorentz-invariant random distribution of energy into different modes of electromagnetic radiation. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) uses the hypothesis that the amplitudes of the Lorentz-invariant radiation are quantized, whereas SED uses the hypothesis that they are continuous.The motions of electric charges in SED are modeled using the equations of motion for a particle, often associated with a concrete visualization. SED is considered part of classical physics because of the continuous distribution of amplitudes. However, discrete values for energy and momentum emerge from SED without the ad hoc quantization conditions of QED.Stochastic electrodynamics has been investigated as a classical physics explanation for quantum phenomena. For instance, the blackbody radiation spectrum has been derived without quantum assumptions.11. T. H. Boyer, Phys. Rev. 182, 1374 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.182.1374 Lorentz-invariant radiation provides perturbations that mimic quantum phenomena such as the Casimir force, the van der Waals force, the Lamb shift, and the radius of the Bohr atom.22. M. Ibison, B. Haisch, Phys. Rev. A 54, 2737 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.2737Physical chemistry provides many mathematical expressions that are often thought to be fundamentally quantum in nature. However, some of those expressions have been shown to emerge from both QED and SED. For example, the Schrödinger equation has been derived from SED,33. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993 and the wavefunction in the SED Schrödinger equation is shown to have the a priori significance of position probability amplitude. A physical model based on SED has been developed to increase our understanding of both the diffraction of particle beams and the Pauli exclusion principle.44. A. F. Kracklauer, Found. Phys. Lett. 12, 441 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021629310707Quantum mechanics is often cited to justify chemical bonding on an elementary level. However, the visualizations used for chemical bonding are often based on mathematical expressions that can be derived from either QED or SED. Regardless of which turns out to be more accurate in physics experiments or more complete in mathematical description, the two theories overlap with regard to physical chemistry. Therefore, I propose that introductory chemistry taught in secondary schools can be rationalized as easily by references to SED as to QED.Either theory produces identical predictions for many experiments involving second-order correlations, squeezing (quadrature noise reduction), and the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen proposal.55. S. Chaturvedi, P. D. Drummond, Phys. Rev. A 55, 912 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.55.912 However, SED is not completely equivalent to QED on a mathematical or physical level. The SED Schrödinger equation is incomplete, because there is a companion equation that has no counterpart in ordinary quantum mechanics and restricts initial conditions.33. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993 Furthermore, the predictions of QED and SED are different with regard to high-order correlations in nonlinear optics.I agree fully with Grujić and Simonović that the classical atom is alive and well. Models of the atom based on SED are sufficiently accurate for many technological and most pedagogical applications. Even if the classical atom isn’t the most fundamental description of the physical world, it is still an important one.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<CITING ARTICLES1. T. H. Boyer, Phys. Rev. 182, 1374 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.182.1374, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. M. Ibison, B. Haisch, Phys. Rev. A 54, 2737 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.2737, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI3. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 , Google ScholarCrossref, ISIG. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993, , Google ScholarCrossref, ISI4. A. F. Kracklauer, Found. Phys. Lett. 12, 441 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021629310707, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI5. S. Chaturvedi, P. D. Drummond, Phys. Rev. A 55, 912 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.55.912, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI© 2013 American Institute of Physics.

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Quantum Electrodynamics (QED) has been extremely successful inits predictive capability for atomic phenomena. Thus the greatest hope for any alternative view is solely to mimic the predictive capability of quantum mechanics (QM), and perhaps its usefulness will lie in gaining a better understanding of microscopic phenomena. Many “paradoxes” and problematic situations emerge in QED. To combat the QED problems, the field of Stochastics Electrodynamics (SE) emerged, wherein a random “zero point radiation” is assumed to fill all of space in an attmept to explain quantum phenomena, without some of the paradoxical concerns. SE, however, has greater failings. One is that the electromagnetic field energy must be infinit eto work. We have examined a deterministic side branch of SE, “self field” electrodynamics, which may overcome the probelms of SE. Self field electrodynamics (SFE) utilizes the chaotic nature of electromagnetic emissions, as charges lose energy near atomic dimensions, to try to understand and mimic quantum phenomena. These fields and charges can “interact with themselves” in a non-linear fashion, and may thereby explain many quantum phenomena from a semi-classical viewpoint. Referred to as self fields, they have gone by other names in the literature: “evanesccent radiation”, “virtual photons”, and “vacuum fluctuations”. Using self fields, we discuss the uncertainty principles, the Casimir effects, and the black-body radiation spectrum, diffraction and interference effects, Schrodinger's equation, Planck's constant, and the nature of the electron and how they might be understood in the present framework. No new theory could ever replace QED. The self field view (if correct) would, at best, only serve to provide some understanding of the processes by which strange quantum phenomena occur at the atomic level. We discuss possible areas where experiments might be employed to test SFE, and areas where future work may lie.
I propose that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and quantum phenomena derive from the existence of real vacuum stochastic fields filling space. I revisit stochastic electrodynamics (SED), a theory that studies classical systems of electrically charged particles immersed in an electromagnetic (zeropoint) radiation field with spectral density proportional to the cube of the frequency, Planck's constant appearing as the parameter fixing the scale. Asides from briefly reviewing known results, I make a detailed comparison between SED and quantum mechanics. Both theories make the same predictions when the stochastic equations of motion are of first order in Planck constant, but not in general. I propose that SED provides a clue for a realistic interpretation of quantum theory.
The article “Insights from the classical atom,” by Petar Grujić and Nenad Simonović (Physics Today, May 2012, page 41), was interesting but incomplete. It left out stochastic electrodynamics (SED), an approach to classical mechanics that includes the effects of a proposed zero-point radiation background.The zero-point radiation is a Lorentz-invariant random distribution of energy into different modes of electromagnetic radiation. Quantum electrodynamics (QED) uses the hypothesis that the amplitudes of the Lorentz-invariant radiation are quantized, whereas SED uses the hypothesis that they are continuous.The motions of electric charges in SED are modeled using the equations of motion for a particle, often associated with a concrete visualization. SED is considered part of classical physics because of the continuous distribution of amplitudes. However, discrete values for energy and momentum emerge from SED without the ad hoc quantization conditions of QED.Stochastic electrodynamics has been investigated as a classical physics explanation for quantum phenomena. For instance, the blackbody radiation spectrum has been derived without quantum assumptions.11. T. H. Boyer, Phys. Rev. 182, 1374 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.182.1374 Lorentz-invariant radiation provides perturbations that mimic quantum phenomena such as the Casimir force, the van der Waals force, the Lamb shift, and the radius of the Bohr atom.22. M. Ibison, B. Haisch, Phys. Rev. A 54, 2737 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.2737Physical chemistry provides many mathematical expressions that are often thought to be fundamentally quantum in nature. However, some of those expressions have been shown to emerge from both QED and SED. For example, the Schrödinger equation has been derived from SED,33. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993 and the wavefunction in the SED Schrödinger equation is shown to have the a priori significance of position probability amplitude. A physical model based on SED has been developed to increase our understanding of both the diffraction of particle beams and the Pauli exclusion principle.44. A. F. Kracklauer, Found. Phys. Lett. 12, 441 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021629310707Quantum mechanics is often cited to justify chemical bonding on an elementary level. However, the visualizations used for chemical bonding are often based on mathematical expressions that can be derived from either QED or SED. Regardless of which turns out to be more accurate in physics experiments or more complete in mathematical description, the two theories overlap with regard to physical chemistry. Therefore, I propose that introductory chemistry taught in secondary schools can be rationalized as easily by references to SED as to QED.Either theory produces identical predictions for many experiments involving second-order correlations, squeezing (quadrature noise reduction), and the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen proposal.55. S. Chaturvedi, P. D. Drummond, Phys. Rev. A 55, 912 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.55.912 However, SED is not completely equivalent to QED on a mathematical or physical level. The SED Schrödinger equation is incomplete, because there is a companion equation that has no counterpart in ordinary quantum mechanics and restricts initial conditions.33. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993 Furthermore, the predictions of QED and SED are different with regard to high-order correlations in nonlinear optics.I agree fully with Grujić and Simonović that the classical atom is alive and well. Models of the atom based on SED are sufficiently accurate for many technological and most pedagogical applications. Even if the classical atom isn’t the most fundamental description of the physical world, it is still an important one.REFERENCESSection:ChooseTop of pageREFERENCES <<CITING ARTICLES1. T. H. Boyer, Phys. Rev. 182, 1374 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRev.182.1374, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI2. M. Ibison, B. Haisch, Phys. Rev. A 54, 2737 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.54.2737, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI3. G. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1101 (1983); https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00728139 , Google ScholarCrossref, ISIG. H. Goedecke, Found. Phys. 13, 1195 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00727993, , Google ScholarCrossref, ISI4. A. F. Kracklauer, Found. Phys. Lett. 12, 441 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1021629310707, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI5. S. Chaturvedi, P. D. Drummond, Phys. Rev. A 55, 912 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.55.912, Google ScholarCrossref, ISI© 2013 American Institute of Physics.
Abstract This book is unique in covering phenomena in photon- matter interactions in a unified way over a range of many orders in energy. The quantum field theoretic approach to the fully relativistic theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED) is presented together with the non- relativistic theory in both confined and unconfined geometries. The predictions of QED have been verified to a greater accuracy than any other physical theory. Moreover QED is a paradigm for other gauge theories and is presented in such a way that the generalisation to other gauge theories is natural. Gauge and Poincare symmetry properties and the non-existence of a photon wave function are thoroughly discussed. Starting from the Dirac equation the non-relativistic interaction of the electron with the electromagnetic field is derived as an effective Hamiltonian of multipole expansions. Much of quantum optics is based on the lowest order dipole approximation. From this point on the treatment of fully relativistic QED and quantum optics is done in parallel. Applications of perturbation theory such as Compton and Moller scattering and the theory photdetection are given. After the impressive successes of QED, the limitation of the theory and the necessity of electroweak theory and quantumchromodynamics are discussed. The remaining chapters are devoted to quantum optics inside cavaties. Various approaches to open systems such as master equations are discussed within the context of active systems (e.g. the laser) and passive systems. Semi- classical approximarions are shown to imply a rich non- linear dynamics including chaos for certain parameter regimes. The effect of fluctuations on such non-linear dynamics is also studied. The final chapter is devoted to highly non- classical states of the light field such as photon number, squeezed and two photon entangled states. The latter are studied for the important system of parametric down conversion and the localisation properties of photons are characterised in terms of asympotic tails in photodetection probabilities as a function of time delay. The range of the book has wider benefits. Workers in quantum optics will gain a deeper understanding of the foundations of their subject and field theorists will see concrete examples of open systems, which are beginning to impinge on fundamental theories.
Arguments are provided for the plausibility that quantum mechanics is a stochastic theory and that many quantum phenomena derive from the existence of a real noise consisting of vacuum fluctuations of the fields existing in nature. I revisit stochastic electrodynamics, a theory that studies classical systems of electrically charged particles immersed in a real electromagnetic zeropoint field with spectral density proportional to the cube of the frequency, Planck\'{}s constant appearing as the parameter fixing the scale. Asides from briefly reviewing known results, I introduce a calculational quantumlike method resting upon the commutator of stochastic processes. An intuitive explanation is offered for some typical quantum features, like the uncertainty principle, the entanglement and the fact that quantum noise looks as not dissipative.
The nature of the problem The quantum world is inexplicable in classical terms. The predictions pertaining to the interaction of matter and light embodied in Newton's laws for the motion of particles and Maxwell's equations governing the propagation of electromagnetic fields are in flat contradiction with the experimental facts at the microscopic scale. A key feature of quantum effects is their apparent indeterminism, that individual atomic events are unpredictable, uncontrollable and literally seem to have no cause. Regularities emerge only when one considers a large ensemble of such events. This indeed is generally considered to constitute the heart of the conceptual problem posed by quantum phenomena, necessitating a fundamental revision of the deterministic classical world view. Some of the principal phenomena, among those discussed in this book, are as follows: ( a ) Self-interference: a beam of electrons sent one at a time through a barrier containing two apertures builds up through a series of localized detection events on a screen an interference pattern characteristic of waves (cf. the frontispiece and §5.1). ( b ) Tunnelling: an α-particle trapped in a nucleus can pass through a potential barrier in a manner forbidden to a classical particle (§5.3). ( c ) The stability of matter: atoms and molecules are found to exist only in certain discrete, or ‘stationary’, energy states. For this reason they do not ‘collapse’, the result predicted by classical electrodynamics. During transitions between stationary states (quantum jumps) an atom exchanges a discrete quantity of energy with the electromagnetic field (§§4.5, 7.6). […]
During the last decades there has been a relatively extensive attempt to develop the theory of stochastic electrodynamics (SED) with a view to establishing it as the foundation for quantum mechanics. The theory had several important successes, but failed when applied to the study of particles subject to nonlinear forces. An analysis of the failure showed that its reasons are not to be ascribed to the principles of SED, but to the methods used to construct the theory, particularly the use of a Fokker-Planck approximation and perturbation theory. A new, non perturbative approach has been developed, called linear stochastic electrodynamics (LSED), of which a clean form is presented here. After introducing the fundamentals of SED, we discuss in detail the principles on which LSED is constructed. We pay attention to the fundamental issue of the mechanism that leads to the quantum behaviour of field and matter, and demonstrate that indeed LSED is a natural way to the quantum formalism by demanding its solutions to comply with a limited number of principles, each one with a clear physical meaning. As a further application of the principles of LSED we derive also the Planck distribution. In a final section we revisit some of the most tantalizing quandaries of quantum mechanics from the point of view offered by the present theory, and show that it offers a clear physical answer to them.