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Routledge eBooks

Operational and Phenomenological Analysis

Michael Whiteman

Published Jun 3, 2014• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Against the conclusion now reached, that the basis of measurement must be a prescribed operational geometry, it can of course be argued that physics has had to abandon the attempt to exhibit its fundamental concepts operationally. For example, wave-functions, whether of single particles or of systems of particles as in the atom or nucleus, are in principle unobservable. To claim that they might somehow be observed, even by as indirect a way as the 'observation' of energy-levels, would be to overthrow the formalism of quantum mechanics in its very origins, and thus to discount all its experimental confirmations.

DOI
10.4324/9781315830117-18

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Against the conclusion now reached, that the basis of measurement must be a prescribed operational geometry, it can of course be argued that physics has had to abandon the attempt to exhibit its fundamental concepts operationally. For example, wave-functions, whether of single particles or of systems of particles as in the atom or nucleus, are in principle unobservable. To claim that they might somehow be observed, even by as indirect a way as the 'observation' of energy-levels, would be to overthrow the formalism of quantum mechanics in its very origins, and thus to discount all its experimental confirmations.
It is not easy for practicing physicists to keep track of the ongoing philosophical debate concerning the "reality'' of the entities they manipulate or the "objective validity'' of the results of their work. In addition, the role of the observer and the theory of the measuring process seem to be themselves controversial. Therefore it may be appropriate to present an interpretation of quantum mechanics which corresponds to the perspective of most practicing physicists, although the author makes no claim to possessing any particular knowledge of the literature in this domain. The final four sections present some more specific descriptions of the concepts used, so that they may also serve for more philosophical discussions.
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Updating the wave-particle duality Maria C. Bosca e-mail: bosca@ugr.es Departamento de Fisica Atomica, Molecular y Nuclear Universidad de Granada E-18071. Granada Spain The wave-particle-duality, the fundamental component of the new quantum formalism in Bohr’s opinion, must be reformulated by incorporating the results of some experiments accomplished in the last decades of twentieth century. The Bohr´s complementarity principle stated the mutual exclusiveness and joint full completeness of the two (classical) descriptions of quantum systems; after Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen’paper, the wave-particle duality, or wave-particle complementarity, could be expressed by stating that it is impossible to build up an experimental arrangement in which we observe at the same time both corpuscular and wave aspects. In a two-slit experiment, they would correspond, respectively, to the which-way knowledge and the observation of interference pattern. Bohr showed this mutual exclusivity in numerous examples , and linked it to the unavoidable disturbance inherent in any measurement event. In quantum mechanical formalism, the complementarity principle has a clear mathematical expression: two observables are complementary if precise knowledge of one of them implies that all possible outcomes of the other are equally probable; their extension to classical concepts (as wave and particle) is not concerned. In 1991 Scully et al published a variant of the two-slit experiment that incorporates two micromasers cavities and a laser beam to provide which-path information without net momentum transferred during the interaction ; the impossibility of know which slit an atom went through and still observe the interference fringes is preserved by the establishing of quantum correlations between the measuring apparatus and the system being observed. They claimed that complementarity, of which wave-particle duality would be to them a manifestation, is more fundamental than the uncertainty principle . In 1996 B-G. Englert, following an approach originally due to Wooters and Zurek , derived , without making use of Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation, an inequality that quantifies the mutual compatibility relation between fringe visibility and which-way information. The inequality, that they denominated as “interferometric duality”, has the expression D^2 + V^2 ≤ 1, where D stands for the distinguishability of the ways and V for the fringe visibility; both of them are mathematical expressions that can be measured to check experimentally the inequality . Today, it is clear that intermediate particle-wave behaviours exist and, in addition to that, there are single experiments in which both classical wave-like and particle-like behaviours are showed total and simultaneously on an individual system. For instance, in the Bose’s double-prism experiment , tunnelling and perfect anticoincidence were observed in single photon states. Consequently, the meaning of the wave-particle duality must incorporate the simultaneous use of the two classical descriptions in the interpretation of experiments, loosing their original mutual exclusivity , which is incorporated as an extreme case in the new interferometric duality, a continuous quantum concept . The wave-particle duality, therefore, must be formulated as an interpretative addition to quantum mechanics, to which is possible to renounce if any pretension of visualize quantum phenomena in terms of classical concepts and intuitions is abandoned.
Introduction Quantum mechanics is based on the intuition that the essential difference between atomic physics and classical physics is the occurrence of discontinuities (see in particular [1,4,58–63]). Quantum mechanics should thus be considered a direct continuation of the quantum theory founded by Planck, Einstein and Bohr. Bohr in particular stressed repeatedly, already before the birth of quantum mechanics, that the discontinuities must lead to the introduction of new kinematical and mechanical concepts, so that indeed classical mechanics and its corresponding conceptual scheme should be abandoned [1,4]. Quantum mechanics tries to introduce the new concepts through a precise analysis of what is ‘observable in principle’. In fact, this does not mean setting up the principle that a sharp division between ‘observable’ and ‘unobservable’ quantities is possible and necessary. As soon as a conceptual scheme is given, one can infer from the observations to other facts that are actually not observable directly, and the boundary between ‘observable’ and ‘unobservable’ quantities becomes altogether indeterminate. But if the conceptual scheme itself is still unknown, it will be expedient to enquire only about the observations themselves, without drawing conclusions from them, because otherwise wrong concepts and prejudices taken over from before will block the way to recognising the physical relationships [Zusammenhänge].