Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Part I Perspectives on the 1927 Solvay conference
- Part II Quantum foundations and the 1927 Solvay conference
- 5 Quantum theory and the measurement problem
- 6 Interference, superposition and wave packet collapse
- 7 Locality and incompleteness
- 8 Time, determinism and the spacetime framework
- 9 Guiding fields in 3-space
- 10 Scattering and measurement in de Broglie's pilot-wave theory
- 11 Pilot-wave theory in retrospect
- 12 Beyond the Bohr–Einstein debate
- Part III The proceedings of the 1927 Solvay conference
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
9 - Guiding fields in 3-space
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Part I Perspectives on the 1927 Solvay conference
- Part II Quantum foundations and the 1927 Solvay conference
- 5 Quantum theory and the measurement problem
- 6 Interference, superposition and wave packet collapse
- 7 Locality and incompleteness
- 8 Time, determinism and the spacetime framework
- 9 Guiding fields in 3-space
- 10 Scattering and measurement in de Broglie's pilot-wave theory
- 11 Pilot-wave theory in retrospect
- 12 Beyond the Bohr–Einstein debate
- Part III The proceedings of the 1927 Solvay conference
- Appendix
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, we address proposals (by Einstein and by Bohr, Kramers and Slater) according to which quantum events are influenced by ‘guiding fields’ in 3-space. These ideas led to a predicted violation of energy-momentum conservation for single events, in contradiction with experiment. The contradiction was resolved only by the introduction of guiding fields in configuration space. All this took place before the fifth Solvay conference, but nevertheless forms an important background to some of the discussions that took place there.
Einstein's early attempts to formulate a dynamical theory of light quanta
Since the publication of his light-quantum hypothesis in 1905, Einstein had been engaged in a solitary struggle to construct a detailed theory of light quanta, and to understand the relationship between the quanta on the one hand and the electromagnetic field on the other. Einstein's efforts in this direction were never published. We know of them indirectly: they are mentioned in letters, and they are alluded to in Einstein's 1909 lecture in Salzburg. Einstein's published papers on light quanta continued for the most part in the same vein as his 1905 paper: using the theory of fluctuations to make deductions about the nature of radiation, without giving details of a substantial theory. Einstein was essentially alone in his dualistic view of light, in which localised energy fragments coexisted with extended waves, until the work of de Broglie in 1923 – which extended the dualism to all particles, and made considerable progress towards a real theory (see Chapter 2).
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- Quantum Theory at the CrossroadsReconsidering the 1927 Solvay Conference, pp. 197 - 204Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009