Tunnelling photons challenge interpretation of quantum mechanics

Michael Clarkson

Daniel J. Rogers

Arnold Neumaier

The collapse challenge for interpretations of quantum mechanics is to build from first principles and your preferred interpretation a complete, observer-free quantum model of the described experiment (involving a photon and two screens), together with a formal analysis that completely explains the experimental result. The challenge is explained in detail, and discussed in the light of the Copenhagen interpretation and the decoherence setting.

Mohammad Reza Abolhasani, M. Golshani

Recently, people have calculated tunneling's characteristic times within Bohmian mechanics. Contrary to some characteristic times defined within the framework of the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, these have reasonable values. Here, we introduce one of the available definitions for tunneling's characteristic times within the standard interpretation as the best definition that can be accepted for the tunneling times. We show that, due to experimental limitations, Bohmian mechanics leads to the same tunneling times.

Peter Shadbolt, Jonathan C. F. Mathews, Anthony Laing +1 more

Walter J. Deal