Real or not real that is the question...
- PDF / 2,018,588 Bytes
- 32 Pages / 481.89 x 708.661 pts Page_size
- 66 Downloads / 212 Views
THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL H
Real or not real that is the question... Reinhold A. Bertlmanna University of Vienna, Faculty of Physics, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria Received 20 May 2020 / Accepted 24 July 2020 Published online 14 September 2020 c The Author(s) 2020. This article is published with open access
at Springerlink.com Abstract. My discussions with John Bell about reality in quantum mechanics are recollected. I would like to introduce the reader to Bell’s vision of reality which was for him a natural position for a scientist. Bell had a strong aversion against “quantum jumps” and insisted to be clear in phrasing quantum mechanics, his “words to be forbidden” proclaimed with seriousness and wit – both typical Bell characteristics – became legendary. I will summarize the Bell-type experiments and what Nature responded, and discuss the implications for the physical quantities considered, the real entities and the nonlocality concept due to Bell’s work. Subsequently, I also explain a quite different view of the meaning of a quantum state, this is the information theoretic approach, focusing on the work of Brukner and Zeilinger. Finally, I would like to broaden and contrast the reality discussion with the concept of “virtuality,” with the meaning of virtual particle occurring in quantum field theory. With some of my own thoughts I will conclude the paper which is composed more as a historical article than as a philosophical one.
Dedicated to Renate Bertlmann, my lovingly companion through all these years.
1 How all started In 1977 I stayed with my wife for about 9 months in the former Soviet Union. I had the opportunity to work as a young postdoc in the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics at the JINR (Joint Institute for Nuclear Research) in Dubna, which was headed at that time by Dmitrii Ivanovich Blokhintsev. I was the only Western foreigner in that Laboratory, only once a month a computer expert arrived for service and update of the huge CDC computers, he was Austrian too. Such a collaboration with Austrians was possible at those “Cold War” times between the Western and Eastern Bloc due to the “Declaration of Neutrality” of Austria, i.e., neither becoming a member of the NATO nor of the Warsaw Pact (Warsaw Treaty Organization – WTO). And, as I could experience, the Russians sympathized very much with Austrians uncritical representation of history between the good and bad ones, between Austrians who were occupied and Germans who were the occupiers. a
e-mail: [email protected]
2
The European Physical Journal H
Fig. 1. (a) Cover of Blokhintsev’s book. On the “Foundations of Quantum Mechanics” in Russian. (b) Dmitri Iwanowitsch Blokhintsev signing his book for Reinhold in Blokhintsev’s c Renate Bertlmann. (This figure is subject to copyright protection Dacha in Dubna in 1977. and is not covered by a Creative Commons license.)
There were several prominent physicists at the Laboratory, one was certainly its director Blokhintsev who was honored with high Soviet awards. He made impo
Data Loading...
