In 1927 at the fifth Solvay Council, that reunited all the aristocracy of theoretical physics, Einstein, regarding with solicitude the new-born “quantum mechanics” of Louis de Broglie, Schrödinger, Heisenberg and Dirac, discerned with his usual sagacity an indelible mark that was destined to become, with time, a subject of passionate discussion among those whose vocation is to adulate this enigmatic and capricious personality.In 1926 Born had given the prophetic stroke to the portrait. Turning to probability as to the official factotum (...) of the reconciliation of the continuous and the discontinuous-here, the associated wave and particle-he transmuted the waves of de Broglie and Schr6dinger into an undulatory calculus o f probabilities, deducing, from a surprising principle, consequences that were even more surprising but always verified through experiment. Parting from the idea that the intensity of the wave is the probability of the detection of the particle at a given point and time, Born replaced the classic principle of addition of partial probabilities with his “principle of the addition of partial amplitudes” that are, as in classical optics, represented by “complex” dimensions, with one real part and one imaginary part. In general, the square of the module of the sum of amplitudes will be the probability. This expression contains, of course, the terms “square” and “rectangular.” The first, if they were alone, would give the former law; as for the second, they express the existence of phenomena of interference that are at the origin of the thousand and one well verified paradoxes of the “new mechanics “-the one thousand and first being the one under consideration here. (shrink)

Electromagnetic gauge as an integration condition was my wording in previous publications. I argue here, on the examples of the Möllenstaedt-Bayh and Tonomura tests of the Ahraronov–Bohm (AB) effect, that not only the trapped flux Φ but also, under the integration conditionA ≡ 0 if Φ = 0, the local value of the vector potential is measured.

A drastic resolution of the quantum paradoxes is proposed, combining (I) von Neumann's postulate that collapse of the state vector is due to the act of observation, and (II) my reinterpretation of von Neumann's quantal irreversibility as an equivalence between wave retardation and entropy increase, both being “factlike” rather than “lawlike” (Mehlberg). This entails a coupling of the two de jure symmetries between (I) retarded and (II) advanced waves, and between Aristotle's information as (I) learning and (II) willing awareness. Symmetric (...) acceptance of cognizance as a source of retarted waves, and of will as a sink of advanced waves, is submitted as a central “paradox” of the Copernican or Einsteinian sort, out of which new light is shed upon previously known paradoxes, such as the EPR paradox, Schrödinger's cat, and Wigner's friend. Parapsychology is thus found to creep into the picture. (shrink)

This paper is a sequel to various papers by the author devoted to the EPR correlation. The leading idea remains that the EPR correlation (either in its well-known form of nonseparability of future measurements, or in its less well-known time-reversed form of nonseparability of past preparations) displays the intrinsic time symmetry existing in almost all physical theories at the elementary level. But, as explicit Lorentz invariance has been an essential requirement in both the formalization and the conceptualization of my papers, (...) the noninvariant concept ofT symmetry has to yield in favor of the invariant concept ofPT symmetry, or even (asC symmetry is not universally valid) to that ofCPT invariance. A distinction is then drawn between “macro” special relativity, defined by invariance under the orthochronous Lorentz group and submission to the retarded causality concept, and “micro” special relativity, defined by invariance under the full Lorentz group and includingCPT symmetry. TheCPT theorem clearly implies that “micro special relativity”is relativity theory at the quantal level. It is thus of fundamental significance not only in the search of interaction Lagrangians, etc., but also in the basic interpretation of quantum mechanics, including the understanding of the EPR correlation. While the experimental existence of the EPR correlations is manifestly incompatible with macro relativity, it is fully consistent with micro relativity. Going from a retarded concept of causality to one that isCPT invariant has very radical consequences, which are briefly discussed. (shrink)

Quite often the compatibility of the EPR correlations with the relativity theory has been questioned; it has been stated that “the first in time of two correlated measurements instantaneously collapses the other subsystem”; it has been suggested that a causal asymmetry is built into the Feynman propagator. However, the EPR transition amplitude, as derived from the S matrix, is Lorentz andCPT invariant; the correlation formula is symmetric in the two measurements irrespective of their time ordering, so that the link of (...) the correlations is the Feynman zigzag, and that causality isCPT invariant at the microlevel; finally, although the Feynman propagator has theP andCT symmetries, no causal asymmetry follows from that. As for Stapp's views concerning “process” and “becoming,” and his Whiteheadean concept of an advancing front, I object that they belong to “factlike macrophysics,” and are refuted at the microlevel by the EPR phenomenology, which displays direct Fokker-like space-time connections. The reason for this is a radical one. The very blending of a space-time picture and of a probability calculus is a paradox. The only adequate paradigm is one denying objectivity to space-time—but this, of course, is also required by the complementary of the x and the k pictures, which only “look” compatible at the macrolevel. Therefore, the classical “objectivity” must yield in favor of “intersubjectivity.” Only the macroscopic preparing and measuring devices have “factlike” objectivity; the “transition” of the “quantal system” takes place beyond both thex and thek 4-spaces. Then, the intrinsic symmetries between retarded and advanced waves, and statistical prediction and retrodiction, entails that the future has no less (but no more) existence than the past. It is the future that is significant in “creative process,” the “elementary” forms of which should be termed “precognition” or “psychokinesis”—respectively symmetric to the factlike taboos that “we can neither know into the future nor act into the past.” It is gratifying that Robert Jahn, at the Engineering School of Princeton University, is conducting (after others) conclusive experiments demonstrating “low level psychokinesis”—a phenomenon implied by the very symmetry of the negentropy-information transition. So, what pierces the veil of “maya” is the (rare) occurrence of “paranormal phenomena.” The essential severance between “act” and “potentia” is not a spacelike advancing front, but the “out of” and the “into” factlike space-time. Finally, I do not feel that an adequate understanding of the EPR phenomenology requires going beyond the present status of relativistic quantum mechanics. Rather, I believe that the potentialities of this formalism have not yet been fully exploited. (shrink)

It is argued that the so‐called correlation paradoxes of Einstein‐Podolsky‐Rosen1 and of Schrödinger2 imply that individual quantum processes are connected in time in a way that is symmetric with retarded and advanced actions; a · fatalistic · character of the course of events is thus advocated, similar to the one occuring in the so‐called · Heisenberg picture · in hyperquanitized field theory.

On relativistic covariance, modelism vs. formalism, and poetry.

Brillouin sees order as generated by tapping negentropy sources existing upstream, while Prigogine sees it as generated by dumping entropy downstream. Joining both ideas yields a picture of the computer closely paralleling that of Carnot's heat engine. The difference is that the one delivers information and the other, work. In either case the irretrievable (that is, by definition) loss occurs at the last step. Bennett and Landauer very rightly emphasize this, but their fixation on the condenser blinds them to the (...) necessity of the furnace; thus they are led to believe in the possibility of “perpetual duplication of the second kind,” which Brillouin explicitly denies. (shrink)

A la différence de plusieurs interprétations de la mécanique quantique basées sur la phénoménologie de l'expérimentation macroscopique, celle-ci repose exclusivement sur le formalisme de la mécanique quantique relativiste lui-même. On y assimile le concept de causalité à celui d'une probabilité conditionnelle ayant deux traits spécifiques : « non-séparabilité » des occurrences au sens du calcul quantique des probabilités ; invariance sous les rotations et les retournements d'axes du référentiel spatio-temporel cartésien, impliquant une réversibilité cause-effet. Unlike various interpretations of quantum mechanics (...) based upon the phenomenology of macroscopic experimentation, this one rests entirely upon the formalism of relativistic quantum mechanics per se. The concept of causality is likened to that of a conditional probability endowed with two specific features : « non-separability » of occurrences in the sense of the quantal calculus of probabilities ; invariance under rotations and reversals of axes of the spatiotemporal Cartesian reference frame, entailing cause-effect reversibility. (shrink)

Bohr's 1930 derivation of the uncertainty relation c 2 δm δt≥h bears a close relationship to Einstein's 1913 derivation of the “gravitational redshift” via the “equivalence principle.” A rewording of Bohr's argument is presented here, not taking the last step of acceleration as “equivalent” to a uniform gravity field, thus yielding a derivation of the formula c 2 δm δt≥h, avoiding Treder's 1971 objection.

The two photon problem defined by Vigier and Garuccio should be treated in the second quantization formalism; it is, thus, seen that the amplitude for finding one photon in the interference region of the two lasers remains the sum of the two interfering amplitudes.

Joseph Bertrand's 1888 evidencing that assignment of a probability depends upon what one chooses to know or not and to control or not, congruent with Grad's 1961 evidencing that statistical entropy depends upon what one deems relevant or not in formalization and measurement, radically undermine common sense realism; mean values are symbols, but symbols of what? For that very reason, recent clever conceptualizations of the quantum measurement process via partial tracing do not restore realism: How could deliberate ignorance generate a (...) reality? Beyond this, Born's and Jordan's quantal wavelike probability calculus, entailing algebraic nonseparability and spacetime nonlocality, blurs “reality” still more radically. Thus information stands out as the master word, with its two reciprocal aspects: knowledge and organization. (shrink)