Adventures in Quantumland

The following sections are included:

• Prologue
• About the Author
• Contents

The following sections are included:

• The Lump in the Carpet
• More than Meets the Eye
• The Haunting of Hill House … and Modern Physics?
• A Physical Process is a Two-way Street
• References

The following sections are included:

• Wave First, and then ‘Particle’
• TI: Review of the Basics
• The Transactional Picture vs. the Traditional Approach
• TI Explains the Measurement Transition
• TI Explains the Quantum Probability Rule
• References

The following sections are included:

• When is the Experiment ‘Finished?’
• The Measurement Transition
• ‘Decoherence’ — and Why it Doesn’t Help
• Does Consciousness Play Any Role in Measurement?
• An Example of Measurement without Humans or Observers
• Measurement as Actualization of Quantum Possibilities
• Observables, not Quantum Entities, Carry Time Dependence
• Null Measurements
• References

The following sections are included:

• Thinking Outside the Box
• What is Retrocausation?
• Spacetime is the Smile on the Cheshire Cat
• The Spacetime ‘Geode’ Crystallizes from Quantum ‘Minerals’
• The ‘Cosmic Egg’ Hatches, and a Photon Flies from Here to There
• Zero-point Energy
• Mistaking the Map for the Territory: The Andromedans and the Block World
• References

In this chapter, we consider the implications of the transactional picture for our view of time. We’ll see how it enables us to resolve long-standing problems in the ability of physics to explain our experience of the ‘flow’ of time.

The following sections are included:

• The Problem of Free Will
• No Need to be Disillusioned
• Weaknesses in Popular Arguments Against Free Will
• Quantum Theory: The Ideal Opening for Free Will?
• Life Creates Disequilibrium … but How?
• References

This chapter explores the ways in which quantum theory evokes traditionally spiritual and religious concepts. Of course, one can adopt the transactional interpretation of quantum theory as the best explanation for the form and success of quantum theory without any sort of metaphysical or spiritual content. However, as suggested in the previous chapter, the idea that quantum possibilities transcend the 3+1 dimensions of the empirical, spacetime realm is evocative of traditionally spiritual and intuitive approaches to knowledge and discovery. In particular, the findings reported in this book and in UOUR arguably support a resolution of the usual ‘science vs. religion’ dichotomy, which arises from a strict empiricist understanding of science that restricts reality to the 3+1 dimensions of space and time. If it is granted instead that modern physics calls for an expansion of our concept of reality — i.e., that reality has both ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ aspects, then the traditional tension between science and spiritual or religious ways of knowing is reduced or even eliminated.

This book has presented, in as non-technical a form as possible, the key ideas and developments of the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation of quantum theory (RTI). RTI is based on the brilliant insights of John A. Wheeler and Richard Feynman (1945, 1949), Paul Davies (1970–1972), and John G. Cramer (1986). This interpretation provides a solution to the measurement problem of quantum mechanics in that it allows us to define measurement from within the theory itself. RTI can do this because its model of fields is that of the direct-action (‘absorber’) theory, in which the active participation of absorbers, which generate their own time-symmetric fields in response to the time-symmetric field from an emitter, is a crucial part of the process resulting in transfer of real energy from one system to another — and that is what defines the process of ‘measurement.’ In this way, it provides a theoretically grounded basis for the heretofore mysterious ‘measurement transition’ of von Neumann. While the absorber theory is empirically equivalent to standard theories of fields (i.e., yields the same predictions), it is technically a different theoretical model. Since the transactional picture uses the absorber theory, it is actually more than just an interpretation of an existing theory: it does have interpretive aspects, but it has additional theoretical content as well (the active role of absorbers). The latter is what allows it to explain what cannot be explained in the standard approach — what it is that constitutes ‘measurement’&

Quantum theory is very puzzling in many ways. Sometimes, however, it is made to seem even more mystifying than it needs to be. In this appendix, we’ll examine some proposals that have been presented in both the technical and popular literature. These have been used to predict phenomena that at first glance seem even more bizarre than what we would find in ordinary quantum theory. However, when we look ‘behind the magician’s curtain,’ we’ll find that nothing quite that bizarre or surprising is going on (besides the quantum puzzles already reviewed in UOUR).

The Transactional Interpretation offers a solution to the measurement problem by identifying specific physical conditions precipitating the non-unitary ‘measurement transition’ of von Neumann. Specifically, the transition occurs as a result of absorber response (a process lacking in the standard approach to the theory). The purpose of this Letter is to make clear that, despite recent claims to the contrary, the concepts of ‘absorber’ and ‘absorber response,’ as well as the process of absorption, are physically and quantitatively well-defined in the transactional picture. In addition, the Born Rule is explicitly derived for radiative processes.

In view of a resurgence of concern about the measurement problem, it is pointed out that the Relativistic Transactional Interpretation (RTI) remedies issues previously considered as drawbacks or refutations of the original Transactional Interpretation (TI). Specifically, once one takes into account relativistic processes that are not representable at the non-relativistic level (such as particle creation and annihilation, and virtual propagation), absorption is quantitatively defined in unambiguous physical terms. In addition, specifics of the relativistic transactional model demonstrate that the Maudlin ‘contingent absorber’ challenge to the original TI cannot even be mounted: basic features of established relativistic field theories (in particular, the asymmetry between field sources and the bosonic fields, and the fact that slow-moving bound states, such as atoms, are not offer waves) dictate that the ‘slow-moving offer wave’ required for the challenge scenario cannot exist. It is concluded that issues previously considered obstacles for the Transactional Interpretation are no longer legitimately viewed as such, and that reconsideration of the model is warranted in connection with solving the measurement problem.

It is argued that quantum theory is best understood as requiring an ontological dualism of res extensa and res potentia, where the latter is understood per Heisenberg’s original proposal, and the former is roughly equivalent to Descartes’ ‘extended substance.’ However, this is not a dualism of mutually exclusive substances in the classical Cartesian sense, and therefore does not inherit the infamous ‘mind-body’ problem. Rather, res potentia and res extensa are understood as mutually implicative ontological extants that serve to explain the key conceptual challenges of quantum theory; in particular, nonlocality, entanglement, null measurements, and wave function collapse. It is shown that a natural account of these quantum perplexities emerges, along with a need to reassess our usual ontological commitments involving the nature of space and time.

A transactional account of the emergence of space–time events from a quantum substratum is presented. In this account, space–time is not a substantive manifold that becomes occupied with events; rather, space–time itself exists only in virtue of specific actualized events. This implies that space–time is discrete rather than continuous, and that properties attributed to space–time based on the notion of a continuum are idealizations that do not apply to the real physical world. It is further noted that the transactional picture of the emergence of space–time can provide the quantum dynamics that underlie the causal set approach as proposed by Sorkin and others.

It was first suggested by David Z. Albert that the existence of a real, physical non-unitary process (i.e., “collapse”) at the quantum level would yield a complete explanation for the Second Law of Thermodynamics (i.e., the increase in entropy over time). The contribution of such a process would be to provide a physical basis for the ontological indeterminacy needed to derive the irreversible Second Law against a backdrop of otherwise reversible, deterministic physical laws. An alternative understanding of the source of this possible quantum “collapse” or non-unitarity is presented herein, in terms of the Transactional Interpretation (TI). The present model provides a specific physical justification for Boltzmann’s often-criticized assumption of molecular randomness (Stosszahlansatz), thereby changing its status from an ad hoc postulate to a theoretically grounded result, without requiring any change to the basic quantum theory. In addition, it is argued that TI provides an elegant way of reconciling, via indeterministic collapse, the time-reversible Liouville evolution with the time-irreversible evolution inherent in so-called “master equations” that specify the changes in occupation of the various possible states in terms of the transition rates between them. The present model is contrasted with the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) “spontaneous collapse” theory previously suggested for this purpose by Albert.

It is argued that Niels Bohr ultimately arrived at positivistic and antirealist-flavored statements because of weaknesses in his initial objective of accounting for measurement in physical terms. Bohr’s investigative approach faced a dilemma, the choices being (i) conceptual inconsistency or (ii) taking the classical realm as primitive. In either case, Bohr’s “Complementarity” does not adequately explain or account for the emergence of a macroscopic, classical domain from a microscopic domain described by quantum mechanics. A diagnosis of the basic problem is offered, and an alternative way forward is indicated.

Bound states arise in many interactions among elementary field states, and are represented by poles in the scattering matrix. The emergent nature of bound states suggests that they play an perhaps under-appreciated role in specifying the ontologically relevant degrees of freedom pertaining to composite systems. The basics of this ontology are presented, and it is discussed in light of an example of M. Arsenijević, J. Jeknić-Dugić and M. Dugić.

One of Feynman’s greatest contributions to physics was the interpretation of negative energies as antimatter in quantum field theory. A key component of this interpretation is the Feynman propagator, which seeks to describe the behavior of antimatter at the virtual particle level. Ironically, it turns out that one can dispense with the Feynman propagator in a direct-action theory of fields, while still retaining the interpretation of negative energy solutions as antiparticles.

It is argued that the severe consequences of Haag’s inconsistency theorem for relativistic quantum field theories can be successfully evaded in the direct-action approach. Some recent favorable comments of John Wheeler, often mistakenly presumed to have abandoned his own (and Feynman’s) direct-action theory, together with the remarkable immunity of direct-action quantum electrodynamics to Haag’s theorem, suggest that it may well be a good time to rehabilitate direct action theories. It is also noted that, as extra dividends, direct-action QED is immune to the self-energy problem of standard gauge field QED, and can also provide a solution to the problem of gauge arbitrariness.

In attempting to derive irreversible macroscopic thermodynamics from reversible microscopic dynamics, Boltzmann inadvertently smuggled in a premise that assumed the very irreversibility he was trying to prove: ‘molecular chaos’. The program of ‘einselection’ (environmentally induced superselection) within Everettian approaches faces a similar ‘Loschmidt’s Paradox’: the universe, according to the Everettian picture, is a closed system obeying only unitary dynamics, and it therefore contains no distinguishable environmental subsystems with the necessary ‘phase randomness’ to effect einselection of a pointer observable. The theoretically unjustified assumption of distinguishable environmental subsystems is the hidden premise that makes the derivation of einselection circular. In effect, it presupposes the ‘emergent’ structures from the beginning. Thus the problem of basis ambiguity remains unsolved in Everettian interpretations.

In the libertarian “agent causation” view of free will, free choices are attributable only to the choosing agent, as opposed to a specific cause or causes outside the agent. An often-repeated claim in the philosophical literature on free will is that agent causation necessarily implies lawlessness, and is therefore “antiscientific.” That claim is critiqued and it is argued, on the contrary, that the volitional powers of a free agent need not be viewed as anomic, specifically with regard to the quantum statistical law (the Born Rule). Assumptions about the role and nature of causation, taken as bearing on volitional agency, are examined and found inadequate to the task. Finally, it is suggested that quantum theory may constitute precisely the sort of theory required for a nomic grounding of libertarian free will.

The following section is included:

• Index