Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 The nature of things
- 2 Matter and motion in space and time
- 3 Reality large and small
- 4 The language of Nature
- 5 More is different
- 6 The machinery of particle discovery
- 7 The Standard Model
- 8 The proliferation of matter
- Epilogue: Beneath reality
- Appendix How quantum mechanics is used
- References
- Index
5 - More is different
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- 1 The nature of things
- 2 Matter and motion in space and time
- 3 Reality large and small
- 4 The language of Nature
- 5 More is different
- 6 The machinery of particle discovery
- 7 The Standard Model
- 8 The proliferation of matter
- Epilogue: Beneath reality
- Appendix How quantum mechanics is used
- References
- Index
Summary
The quantum microscopic world view:
I promised an explanation of quantum theory in two steps. In the first step Schrödinger’s wave is something that moves in familiar threedimensional space. You could almost believe, as Schrödinger himself did at first, that there is something real waving that corresponds to the fundamental stuff of matter (electrons, quarks, photons, . . . ), something like Maxwell’s dynamical field of electromagnetism that in the old theory carries what we perceive as light. But alas, the Schrödinger wave function is not even an ordinary number. Its symbol stands for a whole array of numbers, including an amplitude at each point whose square is the probability that a detector will click there, and components in a set of “internal dimensions” that are new features of Nature. Worse, the Schrödinger wave for two detectors moves in six spatial dimensions, three to locate each detector. Adding more detectors requires more dimensions. Whatever it is, the Schrödinger wave is not a “real” field like Maxwell’s.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Constructing RealityQuantum Theory and Particle Physics, pp. 132 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011