The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions

233 Pages·2016·7.707 MB·English

by  John G Cramer

John G. Cramer
T he
Quantum
Handshake
Entanglement,
Nonlocality and Transactions
The Quantum Handshake
John G. Cramer
The Quantum Handshake
Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions
123
JohnG.Cramer
Department ofPhysics
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
USA
ISBN978-3-319-24640-6 ISBN978-3-319-24642-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-24642-0
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This book is dedicated to Gilbert N. Lewis,
John A. Wheeler, and Richard P. Feynman,
who first envisioned the advanced-retarded
handshake.
Foreword
Since its inception, quantum mechanics has been fraught with conceptual diffi-
culties. What started as a noble attempt to understand the behavior of atoms,
morphedintoasetofworkingrulesforcalculatingcertain“observable”quantities.
These working rules have proven amazingly effective at dealing with a wide
range of phenomena whose outcomes are statistical in nature, while attempts to
understandtheinnerworkingsatadeeperlevelhavemetwithimmensefrustration.
My CalTech colleague, the late Richard Feynman, put it this way:
Onemightstillliketoask:Howdoesitwork?Whatisthemachinerybehindthelaw?No
onehasfoundanymachinerybehindthelaw.Noonecanexplainanymorethanwehave
justexplained.Noonewillgiveyouanydeeperrepresentationofthesituation.Wehaveno
ideasaboutamorebasicmechanismfromwhichtheseresultscanbededuced.[1]
Allscientificadvancesrequiresuspensionofdisbelief—iftheyfolloweddirectly
from what came before, they would have already been discovered. The brilliant
insights of the 1920’s that led to our present situation were all of the form “If we
use this particular mathematical representation,then the answer for the (…)comes
out right”, where (…) was, in many cases, certain spectral line energies of the
hydrogen atom. While one must admire the fortitude of those who crafted these
mathematical tricks, the result certainly does not constitute “understanding” in the
sensethatthetermisusedintherestofscience.Bohrandhisfollowersattemptedto
remedy the situation with their “Copenhagen Interpretation”, which has caused
more confusion than the mathematics itself. As Ed Jaynes put it:
…alltheseyearsithasseemedobvioustomeasitdidtoEinsteinandSchrödingerthatthe
Copenhagen Interpretation is a mass of contradictions and irrationality and that, while
theoreticalphysicistscan,ofcourse,continuetomakeprogressinthemathematicaldetails
and computational techniques, there is no hope of any further progress in our basic
understandingofnatureuntilthisconceptualmessisclearedup.[2]
Faced with this situation for what is now nearly a century, there have been two
distinctpositionstakenbythoseinthefield.Thefirstispragmatic,asarticulatedby
Feynman:
vii
viii Foreword
Fig.0.1 CarverMead(1934–),GordonandBettyMooreProfessorEmeritusofEngineeringand
AppliedScienceattheCaliforniaInstituteofTechnology,wastheoriginatorofthetermMoore’s
Law. He discovered that transistors would get faster, better, cooler and cheaper as they were
miniaturized,therebyblazingthetrailthathasledtothemicroelectronicsrevolution
Donotkeepsayingtoyourself,ifyoucanpossiblyavoidit,‘buthowcanitbelikethat?’
because you will get ‘down the drain’, into a blind alley from which nobody has yet
escaped.Nobodyknowshowitcanbelikethat.[3]
Others believe that it will be understood, but may take a long time. John
Archibald Wheeler said it well:
Behinditallissurelyanideasosimple,sobeautiful,socompellingthatwheninadecade,a
century,oramillenniumwegraspit,wewillallsaytoeachother,howcouldithavebeen
otherwise?Howcouldwehavebeensostupidforsolong?[4]
My own belief is that Wheeler is correct, but, instead of just one idea, a whole
constellation of interlocking ideas must come together before the puzzle can be
solved. High on the list of these ideas is the bidirectional arrow of time.
We humans live deep in the grips of thermodynamics, and all of our common
experienceisconditionedbyit.Tousitisnaturalthateventsinthepastdetermine
our situation in the here and now, but inconceivable that events in the future are
affecting us in the present. So deeply is this conviction held that we never stop to
ask from whence this asymmetry arises. The laws of electromagnetism are com-
pletely symmetrical with respect to both time and space. They always have two
solutions:
1. A “retarded solution” that runs forward in time; and
2. An “advanced solution” that runs backward in time.
In spite of this symmetry, it is common practice, based on our thermal experi-
ence, to adopt the first solution and simply ignore the second. Already in 1909,
Einstein had clearly stated the issue:
Inthefirstcasetheelectricfieldiscalculatedfromthetotalityoftheprocessesproducingit,
andinthesecondcasefromthetotalityofprocesses absorbingit…Bothkindsofrepre-
sentationcanalwaysbeused,regardlessofhowdistanttheabsorbingbodiesareimagined
Foreword ix
tobe.Thusonecannotconcludethatthatthe[retardedsolution]isanymorespecialthan
thesolution[containingequalpartsadvancedandretarded].[5]
Atthequantumlevel,thingsarequitedifferentfromourthermalworld:Whenan
atom inan excited state is looking for a way to lose its energy, it must find one or
morepartnerswillingandabletoreceivethatenergy,regardlessofhowdistantthey
are. The Einstein solution, half advanced half retarded, creates a perfect “hand-
shake” by which both atoms can accomplish their energy transfer.
In this book, John Cramer gives us a simple way of resolving many quantum
mysteries by adopting the handshake as the common coinage of quantum interac-
tion. It is by far the most economical way to visualize what is going on in these
“mind-twisters” without departing from the highly successful mathematics of
existing quantum mechanics.
Seattle Carver Mead
July 2015
References
1. R.P. Feynman, R.B. Leighton, M. Sands,The Feynman Lectures, vol. 3 (Addison-Wesley,
Reading,1965).ISBN0201021188
2. E. Jaynes, Probability in Quantum Theory, in Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of
Informationed.byW.Zurek(Addison-Wesley,Reading,1990),pp.381–403
3. R.P.Feynman,TheCharacterofPhysicalLaw(MITPress,Cambridge,1967),p.129
4. J.A.Wheeler,HowCometheQuantum?Ann.NewYorkAcad.Sci.480,304–316(1986)
5. A. Einstein, On the Present Status of the Radiation Problem (Zum gegenwärtigen Stand des
Strahlungsproblems), Physcialische Zeitschrift 10 (1909); translated in A. Beck, P. Havas,
(eds.),TheCollectedPapersofAlbertEinstein,vol.2,(PrincetonUniversityPress,Princeton,
1989)
Preface
In 1900 there were clouds on the scientific horizon, unexplained phenomena that
foretold the coming of the great intellectual revolution that was quantum
mechanics. (See Chap. 2.) Today the scientific horizon is not without similar
clouds. Quantum field theory, our standard model for understanding the funda-
mental interactions between particles and fields, tells us that the energy content
of the quantum vacuum should be 10120 times larger than it actually is. At the
interfacebetweengeneralrelativityandquantumfieldtheory,informationseemsto
be vanishing at event horizons in a very unphysical way (see Sect. 6.21). Within
blackholes,singularitiesarepredictedtoexistthatarecompletelybeyondthereach
of contemporary physics. Quantum chromodynamics, our standard model of par-
ticles, works very well in agreeing with high-energy physics experiments, but it
employstwodozenarbitraryparticlemassesandinteractionstrengths.Wehaveno
idea where these values came from, how they are related, or how they were set in
the early universe.
We can anticipate that our current understanding of Nature at the smallest and
largest scales is at best a rickety scaffolding that must inevitably be replaced or
improved. It is likely that another scientific revolution is on the way. Quantum
mechanics will certainly play a key role in this revolution, but it is currently ham-
pered by our lack of understanding of its inner mechanisms and our inability to
visualizethemanycounter-intuitiveaspectsofquantumbehavior.TheTransactional
Interpretationofquantummechanics,presentedandillustratedinthisbook,provides
toolsforvisualization,forunderstandingquantumprocesses,andfordesigningnew
experiments.Itpavesthewayforfuturetheoreticalandtechnicalprogressandinour
understanding of the way the universe works. These tools should also be useful in
the coming computation revolution, based on artificial intelligence, quantum com-
puting,andquantumcommunication(seeChap.8)thatwill,ifproperlyused,leadto
improvement of the human condition and benefit all of us.
This book gives an overview of the interpretational problems of quantum
mechanics, provides an introduction to the Transactional Interpretation, and then
demonstratestheuseofitinunderstandingwhatisgoingon“behindthescenes”in
xi
xii Preface
many otherwise strange and mysterious problems of quantum optics. The target
audience is the intelligent reader with some grasp of basic mathematics and a
curiosity about quantum mechanics, what it is and how it works. We will not shy
away from using occasional equations, but we will use them sparingly, and only
when they are needed to make an important point.
The style of this book is intended to be wedge-shaped, starting easy and pro-
gressing to the somewhat more technical. It begins with a narrative style and
introduces new concepts slowly and carefully. It builds up the basic conceptual
framework of the Transactional Interpretation slowly, and then swings into action,
applying it to a large collection of otherwise mysterious and counter-intuitive
experiments that illustrate the curious behavior of quantum phenomena. This
requires some mathematics, but the experiments that require the heavy use math-
ematicsfortheiranalysisareplacedinAppendixD.Thereadercan“surf”overthe
mathematicalpartsandstillgainadeepappreciationofwhatquantummechanicsis
and how it works.
A certain mentalflexibility will be asked of the reader in mastering the concept
of“advanced”wavesthataregoingbackwardsintimeandcarryingnegativeenergy
intothepast.Weareconditionedbytheeverydayworldofexperiencetoexpectan
“arrowoftime”thatalwayspointsfromthepasttothefuture,andwearedisturbed
by anything that seems to be going in the wrong time direction. However, the
fundamental equations of physics have a time symmetry that recognizes no pre-
ferredtimedirection.Amoviemadeofthebehavioroffundamentalparticleslooks
OK, whether the images are presented in the time-normal or the time-reverse
sequence. How this time-symmetric microcosm scales up to become the
time-forward-onlyeverydayworldisaverydeepquestionthatisdiscussedinsome
detail in Chap. 9. The Transactional Interpretation, described in this book, uses
wavesgoinginbothtimedirectionswiththetwotypesdoinghandshakesasoneof
itsbasicquantummechanisms,becausethatmechanismcanbeseeninthequantum
formalism itself and because it allows us to understand the weirdness of entan-
glement and nonlocality. However, we note that these advanced
time-running-backwards effects are limited to just the formation of time-forward
transactionsandareneverallowedtoproduce“advancedeffects”thatwouldviolate
cause-and-effect.
The reader is also warned that there are a large and growing number of inter-
pretationsof quantum mechanics, of whichthe TransactionalInterpretation isonly
one. I am reminded of a story that I heard long ago about a young child who was
growing up in a house operated by the Berlitz School of Languages asa residence
forthelanguageteachersoftheSchool.Thechild’smotherspoketohiminEnglish,
his father in French, and the other occupants of the house each spoke to him in a
differentlanguage.Oneday,thechildbegantospeakingibberish.Hisparents,after
hours of persuasion, finally convinced him to talk to them in a language that they
couldunderstand.“Well,”hesaid,“I’mgettingtobeaprettybigboy,andIdecided
that it was time that I had a languageofmy own.”This is much the way it iswith