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Thinking big

Philip W. Anderson

Published Jan 1, 2005• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Fritz London's single-minded thinking led him to surpass even Einstein, as he believed correctly that quantum mechanics was right at all scales, including the macroscopic.

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Ever since the advent of quantum mechanics, it has been clear that the atoms composing matter do not obey Newton's laws. Instead, their behavior is described by the Schroedinger equation. Surprisingly though, until recently, no clear explanation was given for why everyday objects, which are merely collections of atoms, are observed to obey Newton's laws. It would seem that, if quantum mechanics explains all the properties of atoms accurately, they, too, should obey quantum mechanics. This reasoning led some scientists to believe in a distinct macroscopic, or ``big and complicated,'' world in which quantum mechanics fails and classical mechanics takes over, although there has never been experimental evidence for such a failure. Even those who insisted that Newtonian mechanics would somehow emerge from the underlying quantum mechanics as the system became increasingly macroscopic were hindered by the lack of adequate experimental and theoretical tools. In the last decade, however, this quantum-to-classical transition has become accessible to experimental study and quantitative description, and the resulting insights are the subject of this article.

arXiv:quant-ph/0407096•Jul 14, 2004•8 citations
Superconductivity is a macroscopic quantum phenomena. This chapter examines Fritz London's ideas and describes some of the experiments establishing its validity. It was London's realization that electrodynamic behavior was a natural consequence of quantum condensation that led him to propose superconductivity as being fundamentally a macroscopic quantum phenomena. The chapter also discusses only those experiments immediately relevant to the concept of the Josephson junction as a quantum-phase detector for the purpose of experimentally examining the macroscopic quantum state. Because of the unusual voltage-dependent frequency the analysis of these effects is somewhat more complex than for the zero voltage current. However, at low frequencies it is usually adequate to describe the response simply as a complicated time modulation of the zero-voltage current. The existence of singularities within the macroscopic quantum state, however, leads to noise. Unless these singularities move with precision, a noise is developed associated with the random phase motion.
Ever since the advent of quantum mechanics, it has been clear that the atoms composing matter do not obey Newton's laws. Instead, their behavior is described by the Schroedinger equation. Surprisingly though, until recently, no clear explanation was given for why everyday objects, which are merely collections of atoms, are observed to obey Newton's laws. It would seem that, if quantum mechanics explains all the properties of atoms accurately, they, too, should obey quantum mechanics. This reasoning led some scientists to believe in a distinct macroscopic, or ``big and complicated,'' world in which quantum mechanics fails and classical mechanics takes over, although there has never been experimental evidence for such a failure. Even those who insisted that Newtonian mechanics would somehow emerge from the underlying quantum mechanics as the system became increasingly macroscopic were hindered by the lack of adequate experimental and theoretical tools. In the last decade, however, this quantum-to-classical transition has become accessible to experimental study and quantitative description, and the resulting insights are the subject of this article.