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"Quantum mechanics as a result of time broadening of the classical object"
- From: Tim Gwinn <***>
- Date: Wed, 1 Dec 2004 18:58:26 -0500
Today I have been
reading a fascinating new paper on arXiv quant-ph, entitled "Quantum mechanics
as a result of time broadening of the classical object" by A.M.
Ghorbanzadeh:
The essential idea
of the paper is that the author has shown mathematically that the equation
describing a quantum particle can be put into a form which appears to indicate
that the appropriate interpretation of a quantum entity is as being an
entity which is extended in time, both into the past and the
future.
The intriguing
thing about this is how it provides such a nice explanation for the disparate
ways in which quantum particles seem to behave: when not being
measured, they appear to behave according to the statistical nature of the wave
function - a superposition of possible states; but when they are measured, they
are found to be in one specific state. Various notions have been proposed to
explain this Jekyll and Hyde behavior, such as the "collapse" postulate, the
ensemble interpretations, "many-worlds" interpretations and so
on.
This paper
proposes, in effect, that our measurements at (what is for us) a
single instant of time fails to be appropriate for an entity who's intrinsic
measure of "state" requires extension through time. As a result, our
measurements capture but an incomplete aspect of the whole. Very loosely,
one can think of our measurements as capturing but an infinitesimal slice
of the whole - the behavior of that slice is not representative of the
behavior of the whole.
Extension through
time also is also claimed in this paper to make sense of nonlocality.
And
the apparent statistical nature of a quantum particles evolution is not
statistical per se. It appears to us that way, due to our manner of measurement,
but this statistical appearance is rather due to the extension
through time: past, present and future all simultaneously (nonlocally) affecting
the nature of the particles behavior. I'd say that rather than
interpreting the statistical nature of QM as something like an ensemble of
particles, this paper argues that it is a single particle which possesses
something like an ensemble of temporal influences.
This paper brought
to mind Rosen's discussion "Time in General Dynamical Systems", chapter 4.5 in
AS. There Rosen shows that the encoding of time will generally vary from
dynamical system to dynamical system, and cannot be assumed to match some
arbitrary encoding of a "clock time". Also, that each dynamical system will
generally possess a unique time differential, dt, unique to that
system.
The paper is
a fairly mathematical read, although I think the author does a decent
job at explicating in text what he derives from the results. I am in no
position to fact-check his work, but if it is correct, it is quite interesting.
It challenges the commonly held notion of "state", and seems to me would be in
keeping with the general results that Rosen laid out regarding the
generic relative nature of time and time differentials in dynamical
systems.
Regards,
Tim