Atomic Physics Must Discard Conservation of Energy Law

Mariusz Gajda, Piotr Krekora, Jan Mostowski

We study the scattering of light by a single ultracold trapped atom initially in the ground state of the trapping harmonic potential. We have found interesting features of scattering in the regime where the atomic recoil energy is much larger than the separation between oscillatory trap levels. Although we present the quantum-mechanical expression for the scattering cross section, special attention is paid to the semiclassical analysis of the process. We show that the major characteristics of the scattering might be deduced from two conservation laws: conservation of energy and momentum in absorption and emission of photon process separately. These conservation laws impose a strong correlation between scattered light characteristics and the position of the trapped atom at the moment of photon emission. \textcopyright{} 1996 The American Physical Society.

Evan James Williams

Victor Atanasov

The interrelationship between energy and probability conservation is explored from the point of view of statistical physics and non-relativistic quantum mechanics. The simultaneous validity of the law of conservation of energy and the continuity equation (probability conservation) breaks for an interacting dynamical system. A separate and independent description of a physical system can be obtained by requiring that the law of conservation of probability is at the heart of the derivation of the ''equations of motion''. In effect, The Schrodinger equation can be viewed as an appropriate factorization of the continuity equation instead of an energy conservation relation per se.

James Carl Ayoub

The Schrödinger equation has been the central mathematical instrument of quantum mechanics for a century. This paper argues that it is not a quantum mechanical equation at all. It is classical energy conservation applied inside a sphere, with a classical wave form assumed rather than derived. The wavefunction ψ is not a physical object but a lossy geometric encoding. The Born rule—the requirement to square ψ to obtain probabilities—is not a law of nature but a decompression artifact produced by discarding the imaginary phase. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a measurement limit, not an ontological statement about particles, and its use to derive the Bohr radius is circular. All distances obtained from this framework are ratios pretending to be absolutes in a universe where only ratios persist. Relativistic Orthogonal Selection Theory (ROST) dissolves each of these confusions by returning to the geometric substrate the equation was always implicitly describing.