Wave-Particle Duality: A Modern View

Maija Nousiainen, Aku Pajula, Ismo T. Koponen

Wave-particle duality (WPD) of photons is a recurrent topic in science education research in teaching and learning the quantum behaviour of light. In this commentary, we discuss how WPD has been approached in science teaching and science education literature, and how it leads to ontological challenges in searching for the real “nature of photons”. We suggest that WPD can serve as a starting point of teaching quantum physics if we want to use natural language in discussing experimental results (as Bohr intended it to be). That way WPD can also be approached as part of modern quantum optics as a natural language expression to communicate information acquired in experiments. Such an ap-proach includes a contemporary understanding of quantitative WPD as a means to speak about features of photons as quantum states, not as entity-like objects. Content is discussed at a level appropriate for physics teacher education.

Bruce R. Wheaton

Partha Ghose

James E Beecham

Wave-particle duality and action at a distance remain among the most conceptuallychallenging observations in modern physics. Conventional physics successfully predictsthe associated phenomena but often treats them as fundamental paradoxes orconsequences of mathematical formalism. Space-Phase Theory (SP3) offers an alternativeinterpretation in which both phenomena are natural consequences of the organizationalbehavior of a continuous, conditionable three-dimensional medium. In this view, matterremains durable and localized, while wave behavior, propagation, coherence, and apparentnonlocality are properties of the space-phase medium itself. Wave-particle duality andaction at a distance are therefore interpreted not as fundamental mysteries of matter, butas fingerprints of the medium through which matter and energy propagate.

Wei Fan

what is the origin of wave-particle duality in quantum mechanics? This is an unsolved mystery in modern physics. In the latest research, I propose a possible explanation for the origin of wave particle duality. At the same time, I also proposed a feasible way to explain the origin of quantum and quantum entanglement.

Marius Borneas