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Determining When Schrödinger's Cats Die

Ken Krechmer

Published Jul 15, 2023• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

E. Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to illustrate the discontinuity, not currently explained, that appears in quantum mechanics when a measurement occurs. Schrödinger's cats in his thought experiment appear to be both alive and dead. This unreasonable appearance has not been satisfactorily explained before. Calibration, which is required in metrology, is not included in physics theory. Schrödinger's thought experiment is explained by including calibration in measurement theory.

DOI
10.32388/f05d6y.4

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E. Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to illustrate the discontinuity, not currently explained, that appears in quantum mechanics when a measurement occurs. Schrödinger's cats in his thought experiment appear to be both alive and dead. This unreasonable appearance has not been satisfactorily explained before. Calibration, which is required in metrology, is not included in physics theory. Schrödinger's thought experiment is explained by including calibration in measurement theory.
E. Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment to illustrate the discontinuity, not fully understood, that appears in quantum mechanics when a measurement process occurs. The cats in his thought experiment appear to be both alive and dead. This unreasonable appearance has not been satisfactorily explained before. Calibration, which is required in metrology, is not treated in physics theory. This paper illustrates how calibration to a non-local time standard explains the alive and dead appearance of Schrödinger's cats.
Erwin Schrodinger first described the thought-experiment which has since become known as 'the paradox of Schrodinger's cat' 51 years ago. In recent years, popular accounts of quantum mechanics have tended to adopt one or other of the philosophically most extreme solutions to this paradox, i.e. the consciousness hypothesis or the many worlds interpretation. The author attempts to redress the balance by describing what he takes to be the orthodox solution to the paradox which explains the paradox, without recourse to such counterintuitive notions as a cat simultaneously dead and alive or a universe continually splitting into multiple worlds, as being due to a misapplication of the quantum formalism.
The most discussed thought experiment in quantum mechanics (QM) is the one of the dead+living cat, which sets out to explain what is known as the measurement problem. Since the first years of QM, and despite various arguments, the widespread beliefs of the past few years have tended towards including a conscious observer in the act of measurement. Various different opinions have been expressed on the measurement problem by various schools of thought and leading physicists, but none of them has been decisive. Especially, the introduction of an observer (human-brain-consciousness-mind-intelligence) carrying out measurements into the experiment or into the setup of the experiment has led to even more complex problems. Today also, new solutions are being put forward. This article deals with the thought experiment of Schrodinger’s cat and suggestions for alternative solutions by introducing a conscious observer. NeuroQuantology |June 2012 | Volume 10 | Issue 2 | Page 216-229
Abstract Complementarity tells us we cannot know precisely the values of all the properties of a quantum object at the same time: the precise determination of one property implies that the value of some other (complementary) property is undefined. E.g. the precise knowledge of the position of a particle implies that its momentum is undefined. Here we show that a Schrödinger cat has a well defined value of a property that is complementary to its “being dead or alive” property. Then, thanks to complementarity, it has an undefined value of the property “being dead or alive”. In other words, the cat paradox is explained through quantum complementarity: of its many complementary properties, any quantum system, such as a cat, can have a well defined value only of one at a time. Schrödinger’s cat has a definite value of a property which is complementary to “being dead or alive”, so it is neither dead nor alive. Figuratively one can say it is both dead and alive. While this interpretation only uses textbook concepts (the Copenhagen interpretation), apparently it has never explicitly appeared in the literature. We detail how to build an Arduino based simulation of Schrödinger’s experiment based on these concepts for science outreach events.