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Inference International Review of Science

Quanta of the Third Kind

Frank A. Wilczek

Published Nov 17, 2021• 3 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Quantum mechanics is nearly one hundred years old; and yet the challenge it presents to the imagination is so great that scientists are still coming to terms with some of its most basic implications. Theoretical insights and recent experimental results in anyon physics are leading physicists to revise and expand their ideas about what quantum-mechanical particles are and how they behave.

DOI
10.37282/991819.21.64

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Quantum mechanics is nearly one hundred years old; and yet the challenge it presents to the imagination is so great that scientists are still coming to terms with some of its most basic implications. Theoretical insights and recent experimental results in anyon physics are leading physicists to revise and expand their ideas about what quantum-mechanical particles are and how they behave.
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The subject of my talk is the relations between the mathematical theory of extremal problems and the physical theory of quanta.1 The theory of quanta, or quantum mechanics, studies phenomena in the world of bodies of atomic scale. It turned out that the usual notions of motion and the usual methods of description of a mechanical system were inapplicable for such bodies. One needed to find another formulation of the basic laws of nature instead of the old one based on observations of bodies containing a very large number of atoms. The drastic revision of all usual notions of mathematics and physics was required. As a result of this revision and due to the efforts of several scientists such formulation has been found and the theory, which is as elegant and complete as the Newton mechanics is, has been created. This new theory — the new quantum mechanics — contains the Newton mechanics as a limiting case. Although some particular questions and problems remain open, the basic principles and the mathematical technique of the new theory can be considered to be completely established.
This conference was organized under the aegis of the University of Joensuu “to review the impact of the E.P.R. argument on the development of quantum theory, to discuss the philosophical implications of recent experimental and theoretical results on the E.P.R. problem, and to survey some other recent trends in the interpretation of quantum mechanics and classical mechanics.” There were approximately fifty lectures (and another fifty offered), two panel discussions, with over one hundred and fifty participants representing twenty five countries, which is remarkable since one physicist reviewing the original proposal for the conference termed E.P.R. as “the problem that is not a problem!”