Stochastic theory of emission and absorption of quanta
Michele Cini, Maurizio Serva
Abstract
The attempt to reformulate quantum theory in the form of a theory of stochastic processes, which has recently met with considerable success, has failed up to now to describe the most typical quantum effect: the emission and absorption of field quanta. The authors explore the possibility of constructing a stochastic field theory based on the assumption that for any normal mode of a given classical field, the corresponding action variable becomes a stochastic variable assuming only positive integer values in units of h. The proposed method reproduces the known properties of simple quantum field theoretical models without recourse to probability amplitudes, which are quantities extraneous to classical probability theory. The probability transition rates, for simple states of the field, turn out to be those of simple Poisson processes.