Teaching QM: True, Trivial, Inevitable

Sascha Vongehr

Observed violations of Bell type inequalities exclude all relativistic micro causal ("local"), counterfactual definite ("real") hidden variable models of nature. This further relativization of our concept of reality triggers a growing pseudoscientific resistance against quantum mechanics (QM). I define Didactic Randi Challenges (DRC) via five characteristics. These are challenges which, according to the laws of nature, are impossible to meet. They effectively refute pseudoscientific claims according to which the challenge could easily be met. DRC work by being known to exist while never having been overcome, despite the large rewards which would follow from meeting the challenge. Pseudoscience exploits well meaning engagement in argument to create the appearance of an expert dispute (sowing doubt). DRC decline to discuss "until the challenge is met", without solidifying the perception of establishment conspiracy. This requires transparency, thus DRC are efficient didactic tools. The Quantum Randi Challenge (QRC) is a DRC designed to reject hidden variable models by simply teaching QM; there is no bet or interaction with challengers. The QRC is a computer game that anybody can modify. The present version includes a simulation of true QM behavior that violates Bell 99% of the time, hidden variables that violate the Bell and CHSH inequality with 50% probability, and ones which violate Bell 85% of the time when missing 13% anti-correlation. The DRC challenge is to modify the hidden variables so that the predicted QM behavior arises, including anti-correlation. If such were possible, the presented programs would make it trivial to meet the challenge. This fact and the whole QRC can be taught to a wide audience via the presented heuristics. Demanding anti-correlation is argued to be superior to employing CHSH.

Roy A. Kaelin

Marco Di Mauro, Adele Naddeo

Teaching and learning QM at high school as well as the undergraduate level is a highly non-trivial task. Indeed, major changes are required in understanding the new physical reality, and students have to deal with counterintuitive concepts such as uncertainty and entanglement as well as advanced mathematical tools. In order to overcome these critical issues, a simple approach is presented here, which is based solely on two-vector and 2 × 2 matrix algebra. Furthermore, it could also enable educational institutions to fill the gap between high school curricula and the current scientific and technological advances in physics by allowing students to gain some insight into topics such as qubits and quantum computers. The inspiration behind our proposal as well as its firm theoretical foundation are based on the famous Umdeutung (reinterpretation) paper by W. Heisenberg, which introduces QM in matrix form.

Richard Healey

Abstract There is widespread agreement that quantum mechanics has something radical to teach us about causation. But opinions differ on what this is. Physicists have often taken the central lesson to be that many physical events occur spontaneously, so that a principle of causality is violated whenever an atom emits light, or a uranium nucleus decays, even though nothing that happened beforehand made this inevitable. Feynman urged philosophers to acknowledge that this implication of quantum mechanics undermines the view that causal determinism forms a precondition of scientific inquiry. But while some physicists have denied the implication, most philosophers since Reichenbach have accepted it with alacrity, and sought to develop accounts of causation equally applicable in an indeterministic or a deterministic world.

Dick J. Hoekzema