Epistemological and Experimental Perspectives on Quantum Physics

369 Pages·17.26 MB·English

by  Abner Shimony (auth.), Daniel Greenberger, Wolfgang L. Reiter, Anton Zeilinger (eds.)

EPISTEMOLOGICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL PERSPECTIVES
ON QUANTUM PHYSICS
VIENNA CIRCLE INSTITUTE YEARBOOK [1999]
7
VIENNA CIRCLE INSTITUTE YEARBOOK [1999]
7
Institut 'Wiener Kreis'
Society for the Advancement of the Scientific World
Conception
Series-Editor:
Friedrich Stadler
Director, /nstitut Wiener Kreis'
and University of Vienna, Austria
Advisory Editorial Board: Honorary Consulting Editors:
Rudolf Haller, University of Graz, Austria, Coordinator Kurt E. Baier, Pittsburgh. USA
Francesco Barone, University of Pisa, Italy C.G. Hempel t. Princeton, N.J., USA
Nancy Cartwright, London School of Economics, UK Stephan Korner, Bristol, UK
Robert S. Cohen, Boston University, USA Henk Mulder t, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Wilhelm K. Essler, University of Frankfurt/M., Germany Arne Naess, Oslo, Norway
Kurt Rudolf Fischer, University of Vienna, Austria Paul Neurath, New York, USA/Vienna, Austria
Michael Friedman, University of Indiana, Bloomington, USA Willard Van Orman Quine, Cambridge, MA, USA
Peter Galison, Harvard University, USA Marx W. Wartofsky t. New York. USA
Adolf Griinbaum, University of Pinsburgh, USA
Rainer Hegselmann, University of Bayreuth, Germany Review Editor and Editorial Assistant:
Michael Heidelberger, Humboldt-University Berlin, Germany
Michael Stiiltzner
Gerald Holton, Harvard University, USA
Don Howard, University of Notre Dame, USA Editorial Work/Layout/Production:
Allan S. Janik, University of lnnsbruck, Austria
Janos Bekesi
Richard Jeffrey, Princeton University, USA
Robert Kaller
Andreas Kamiah, University of Osnabruck, Germany
Camilla R. Nielsen
Saul A. Kripke, Princeton University, USA
Angelika Rzihacek
Elisabeth Leinfellner, University of Vienna, Austria
Werner Leinfellner, Technical University of Vienna, Austria
Brian McGuinness, University of Siena, Italy
Editorial Address:
Julian Nida-Riimelin, University of GOningen. Germany
Helga Nowomy, ETH ZUrich, Switzerland Institut 'Wiener Kreis'
Joelle Proust, Ecole Polytechnique CREA Paris, France Museumstrasse 5/2/19, A-1070 Wien, Austria
Peter Schuster, University of Vienna, Austria Tel: [phone] (international) or 01/5261005 (national)
Jan Sebestik, CNRS Paris, France Fax: +4~ 1/5248859 (international) or 0115248859 (national)
Karl Sigmund, University of Vienna, Austria email: i v [email protected]
Hans Sluga, University of California, Berkeley homepage~ http://hhobel.phl.univie.ac.at/wk
Antonia Soulez, Universite de Paris 8, France
Christian Thiel, University of Erlangen, Germany
Walter Thirring, University of Vienna, Austria
Thomas E. Uebel, University of Manchester, UK
Georg Winckler, University of Vienna, Austria
Ruth W odak, University of Vienna, Austria
Jan Wolenski, Jagiellonian University, Cracow, Poland
Anton Zeilinger, University of Vienna, Austria
The titles published in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
EPISTEMOLOGICAL
AND EXPERIMENTAL
PERSPECTIVES ON
QUANTUM PHYSICS
Edited by
DANIEL GREENBERGER
City College ofN ew York, U.S.A.
WOLFGANG L. REITER
The Erwin Schrodinger International Institute for Mathematical Physics,
Vienna, Austria
and
ANTON ZEILINGER
University of Vienna, Austria
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-90-481-5354-1 ISBN 978-94-017-1454-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-017-1454-9
Series ISSN 0929-6328
Gedruckt mit Fi:irderung des bsterreichischen Bundesministeriums fiir
Wissenschaft und Verkehr
In Cooperation with the University of Vienna, Center for International
and Interdisciplinary Studies (ZI/S)
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1999
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITORIAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX
Articles
ABNER SHIMONY, Philosophical and Experimental Perspectives
on Quantum Physics (6th Vienna Circle Lecture) .................... .
HELMUT RAUCH, Neutron Quantum Experiments
and their Epistemological Impact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
GIAN-CARLO GHIRARDI, The Dynamical Reduction Program:
An Example of a Quantum Theory Without Observers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
CATHERINE CHEVALLEY, Why do we Find Bohr Obscure? ............... 59
JEAN-MARC LEVY-LEBLOND, Quantum Words for a Quantum World 75
YURI F. ORLOV, Quantum and Classical GOdelian Indeterminism,
Measurement, and Informational Collapse into the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
ROLAND OMNES, Recent Advances in the Consistency of Interpretation ... 103
BASIL HILEY, Active Information and Teleportation ................... 113
DIK BOUWMEESTER, JIAN-WEI PAN, HARALD WEINFURTER,
ANTON ZEILINGER, Experimental Quantum Teleportation
ofQubits and Entanglement Swapping .......................... 127
H.J. KIMBLE, Quantum Teleportation .............................. 141
H.J. BRIEGEL, J.l. CIRAC, W. DOR, G. GIEDKE, P. ZOLLER, Quantum
Repeaters for Quantum Communication ......................... 147
SERGE HAROCHE, Quantum Engineering with Atoms and
Photons in a Cavity .......................................... 155
WOJCIECH H. ZUREK, JUAN P. PAZ, Why We Don't Need Quantum
Planetary Dynamics: Decoherence and the Correspondence
Principle for Chaotic Systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
KURT GOTTFRIED, Is the Statistical Interpretation of Quantum
Mechanics Implied by the Correspondence Principle? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
WALTER THIRRING, The Histories of Chaotic Quantum Systems 187
ERHARD OESER, Epistemological Problems of Measurement
in Quantum Mechanics and the Appearance of the Classical
World of Macroscopic Objects ................................. 199
VI
MICHAEL A. HORNE, Complementarity of Fringe Visibilities
In Three-Particle Quantum Mechanics ........................ 211
Short Presentations
MARKUS ARNDT, OLAF NAIRZ, GERBRAND VAN DER ZOUW,
ANTON ZEILINGER, Towards Coherent Matter Wave
Optics with Macromolecules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
MIRJANA BOZIC, DUSAN ARSENOVIC, Comparison ofWigner's
Function and De Broglian Probability Density . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2. 25
for a Wave Packet and the Wave Packets Superposition
CAS LA v BRUKNER, ANTON ZEILINGER, Quantum Complementarity
and Information Invariance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
THOMAS BUSCH, J.l. CIRAC, J.R. ANGLIN, P. ZOLLER,
Fermi Inhibition in Inhomogeneous Atomic Gases 235
MATTHEW DANIELL, DIK BOUWMEESTER, JiAN-WEI PAN,
HARALD WEINFURTER, ANTON ZEILINGER, Observation of
Three-particle Entanglement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
CLAUDIA KELLER, JORG SCHMIEDMA YER,
ANTON ZEILINGER, Matter Wave Diffraction
at Standing Light Waves ..................................... 245
A LOIS MAIR, ANTON ZEILINGER, Entangled States of Orbital
Angular Momentum of Photons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
LASZLO ROPOLYI, PETER SZEGEDI, Zenonian Arguments
in Quantum Mechanics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
MICHAEL STOLTZNER, What John von Neumann Thought
ofthe Bohm Interpretation .................................... 257
GERBRAND VANDER ZOUW, ANTON ZEILINGER, Observation
of the Nondispersivity of Scalar Aharonov-Bohm Phase Shifts
by Neutron Interferometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
GREGOR WEIHS, THOMAS JENNEWEIN, CHRISTOPH SIMON, HARALD
WEINFURTER, ANTON ZEILINGER, A Bell Experiment under
Strict Einstein Locality Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
PATRICK ZARDA, SURASAK CHIANGGA, THOMAS JENNEWEIN, HARALD
WEINFURTER, Quantum Mechanics and Secret Communication ...... 271
VII
MAREK ZUKOWSKI, DAGOMIR KASZLIKOWSKI, Greenberger-
Harne-Zeilinger Paradox for Three Tritters ....................... 275
Report-Documentation
FRIEDRICH STADLER AND ILKKA A. KIESEPPA, Science-
A House Built on Sand? A Conversation with NORETTA KOERTGE ..... 279
WESLEY SALMON, Ornithology in a Cubical World:
Reichenbach on Scientific Realism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
KURT BLAUKOPF, The Shortcomings of the TV-Screen
in Cultural Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317
Review Essay
LASZLO E. SZABO, Quantum Measurement: On this Side
of Paradox ................................................. 337
Reviews
ALAN W. RICHARDSON, Carnap's Construction oft he World.
The Autbau and the Emergence ofL ogical Empiricism, 1996
(Werner Sauer) ............................................. 347
KEITH LEHRER AND JOHANN CHRISTIAN MAREK (EDS.), Austrian
Philosophy Past and Present. Essays in Honor ofR udolfH aller,
1997 (Kevin Mulligan) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
JESUS PADILLA GALVEZ ET AL. (EDS.), Wittgenstein y el Circulo
de Viena /Wittgenstein und der Wiener Kreis:
Aetas del Congreso lnternacional, Toledo 1994, 1998
(Nelson G. Gomes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
NORETTA KOERTGE (ED.), A House Built on Sand. Exposing
Postmodernist Myths About Science. 1998 (I.A. Kieseppa) . . . . . . . . . . . 356
JOHN EARMAN AND JOHN D. NORTON (EDS.), The Cosmos ofS cience.
1997 (Thomas Breuer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 360
VIII
Activities oft he Institute Vienna Circle
Survey 1999/2000 365
Preview 2001 ................................................. 368
Obituaries: Kurt Blaukopf, Wilhelm Frank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369
INDEX OF NAMES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
EDITORIAL
The ideas of the Vienna Circle philosophers exerted a strong, even if indirect,
influence on the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, and to this day on most
physicists. If you ask most physicists what philosophy they espouse, they will tell
you that they abhor philosophy, and don't know or want to know anything about
it. But if you talk to them about quantum theory, you will quickly discover that
most of them believe that one should define any object by giving a prescription for
measuring it. Furthermore, they will exhibit a deep suspicion of any theoretical
concept that does not have a direct empirical connection. Or at least that is what
they will tell you.
Most of them would be quite disturbed to find out that the wave function 'If of
a system is in the category of objects that they should be suspicious of, as well as
a host of other useful quantities, such as the wavelength, A.. They would probably
be equally disturbed to find out that their whole empiricist attitude toward the
subject has roots going back to Ernst Mach, and follows the path of logical empiri
cism laid down by a small but powerful group of Viennese philosophers (the
Vienna Circle), that ran counter to the dominant Germanic idealistic, and anti
scientific, tradition of the time.
In that sense, they are worse off than the Moliere character who found out that
he had been speaking prose all his life, since they are still unaware that they are
espousing a philosophy, even as they disdain it. Thus they would readily endorse
this wonderful defmition of philosophy, quoted tongue-in-cheek by Eugene Wigner
in his famous (and highly philosophical) essay on the unreasonable effectiveness
of mathematics: "philosophy is the misuse of a terminology that was invented for
just this purpose".
The wonderful thing about quantum mechanics is that it works even if you
don't know what you are talking about. And a good thing it does, since in the last
analysis as Feynman put it "nobody understands it". Nonetheless, a lot of the
controversies that have surrounded the subject since the earliest days have been put
into a sharper focus today, because of the availability of new experimental tech
niques. Thus the gedanken experiments that were discussed heatedly by Bohr and
Einstein have today been performed countless times, and in many variations that
could not have been thought up by them. This has given rise to a new generation of
physicists to whom experiments with individual quanta are an everyday experience
in the laboratory and who thus obtained a natural, intuitive understanding of
quantum phenomena. Today the big empirical question is up to what size can a
system be considered quantum-mechanical? This is the mesoscopic domain, and
the possibility of developing a new technology based on the physics of individual
quanta including building useful quantum computers hinges on its answer.
Einstein was disturbed by the possibility of constructing coherent multiparticle
systems that could be separated spatially, and yet a measurement on one of them
would have a nonlocal physical effect on the others. Even though such effects
X EDITORIAL
cannot allow one to communicate faster than light, their very existence is indeed
disturbing. Einstein thought that these effects implied nothing less than a break
down of what physics is all about, and that very possibility turned him away from
the subject, in which he had made so much of the early progress. These special
states, in which the wave function cannot be factored into a product of the wave
functions of the separate particles, were labeled by SchrOdinger as "entangled
states", a name which stuck, and these states are today the subject of much experi
mental effort.
Entangled states not only have led to new empirical consequences, as exempli
fied by Bell's Theorem, it has also given rise to new concepts for the transmission
and the processing of information signified by such eye-catching concepts like
teleportation and quantum computation. This development has resulted in a new
respectability for the philosophical analysis of the subject (although most physicists
still do not worry about such things). There is also much discussion today of the
deep structure of the theory.
For a long time, the original "Copenhagen" interpretation of the theory was the
only one that could be considered truly viable, and it is still very useful for discuss
ing experiments that have already been performed, and for dreaming up new ones.
But to fully accept this interpretation, one must be able to swallow many hypothe
ses that,justif)'ably or not, on the face of it strike many physicists and philosophers
as rather unlikely, such as the "reduction of the wave packet" upon making an
experiment.
But seventy five years have passed, and we are on the threshold of a new
millenium. Not only has quantum theory stood the test of time, but it has proven
itself to be applicable in regions where one had no reason to hope it might be,
inside nuclei, and in the interior of stars. And so, the theory has proven to be both
versatile and resilient. Thus, over the years, as confidence in the theory has grown,
a number of people have tried to suggest new interpretations. There are now
several interpretations of the theory and as new experimental techniques become
available, there will probably be deeper understanding coming along. This is a
healthy development, and it is now time to stand back and assess some of the new
experimental results, and the status ofthe interpretations of the theory, and prog
ress in understanding its philosophical structure. It is only fitting that such an
assessment should be sponsored by the Erwin Schrodinger Institute and by the
Institute Vienna Circle, which continue the legacy of individuals who played such
an important part in influencing the founding fathers of the subject.
Daniel Greenberger, New York
Wolfgang L. Reiter, Vienna
Anton Zeilinger, Vienna