Quantum Reality by Nick Herbert

Author:Nick Herbert [Herbert, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80674-1
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

FIG. 7.3 The stellar interferometer, measuring the size of a photon’s proxy wave. Each searchlight mirror focuses light from the same star onto the phosphor screen. An interference pattern is observed as long as the two mirrors lie inside the photon’s proxy wave, indicated by the solid/dotted circle. When the mirrors move outside this circle—the boundary of the phton’s wave function—the interference pattern disappears.

On the phosphor screen, the interference pattern is formed one photon at a time: photons are undoubtedly point particles. Yet the pattern itself can only be explained by something wavelike—represented by the photon’s proxy wave—which is able to bounce off both mirrors at once and come together on the screen to produce the zebra-striped pattern characteristic of wave interference. Like the one-hole diffraction experiment, the stellar interferometer demonstrates the coexistence of wave and particle effects. Nothing but particles are ever detected directly, but the pattern of these particles must have been caused by some some sort of wave—the form light seems to take when it is not being measured. The interferometer actually determines the boundaries of this quantum wave and shows that the size of such waves—the same kind of wave an atom is made of—need not be restricted to atomic dimensions.

To understand quantum theory, as opposed to merely knowing how to use it, we must answer two questions: 1. What does the wave function really mean? (the interpretation question); 2. What happens during a quantum measurement? (the measurement problem). The quantum reality crisis arises because physicists have no good answers for either of these questions. In this chapter we looked briefly at the interpretation question. We turn next to the measurement problem.

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