Quantum Mechanics: Strange Particle Theory or Classical Field Theory?

Abstract: In the late 19th and early 20th century, physicists came to the conclusion that phenomena such as (i) thermal radiation; (ii) photoelectric effect; (iii) the Compton effect; (iv) the structure of the atom and its stability; (v) the discrete spectrum of spontaneous emission and the very nature of spontaneous emission; (vi) anomalous Zeeman effect; (vii) the Stern-Gerlach effect and a number of other atomic phenomena cannot be described within the framework of classical mechanics and classical electrodynamics, i.e. within the framework of a theory in which the electron is considered a classical charged particle that obeys Newton's laws of motion, and its interaction with an electromagnetic field is described by Maxwell's laws of classical electrodynamics. As a result of a relatively short search, the main ideas were formulated that formed the basis of modern quantum theory: (a) electromagnetic radiation is quantized, both at the moment of radiation and when interacting with matter (atoms); (b) an electron in an atom can only be in discrete states, transitions between which (spontaneous or forced) are accompanied by the emission or absorption of a quantum of electromagnetic radiation - a photon. The pinnacle of the development of quantum theory was the discovery of the Schrödinger equation and its extended forms - the Pauli, Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations. These equations have proven their predictive power in relation to many so-called quantum phenomena. Thus, on the one hand, the electron began to be described by a certain field - a wave function, continuously distributed in space and time, satisfying the wave equations, and on the other hand, continued to be considered as a point charged particle. As a result, a number of paradoxes have arisen that have not found a final explanation within the framework of orthodox quantum mechanics. I briefly analyze the well-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics and their interpretations and show that in order to explain the paradoxes that have arisen, the adherents of wave-particle duality were forced to introduce new hypothetical physical objects or hypothetical phenomena that led to the emergence of new paradoxes. As a result, the number of paradoxes in quantum mechanics has multiplied exponentially.

At present, the point of view is considered official, according to which the above mentioned phenomena cannot be described within the framework of the concepts of classical physics, i.e. without energy quantization and without using the apparatus of quantum electrodynamics.

I show that we can avoid the QM-paradoxes if we consider some classical wave field (“an electron wave”) instead of electron as a particle and consider the wave equations (Dirac, Klein-Gordon, Pauli and Schrödinger) as the field equations for an electron field similar to Maxwell equations for the electromagnetic field.

I show that such an electron field has an electric charge, an intrinsic angular momentum (spin) and an intrinsic magnetic moment continuously distributed in the space.

In the framework of classical electrodynamics, we obtained the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which accounts for the inverse action of self-electromagnetic radiation of the electron wave. I show that this equation completely and consistently describes all known properties of the hydrogen atom within the framework of classical field theory without any quantization and additional hypothesis: namely, the stability of an atom, the nature and regularities of the spontaneous emissions of an atom, a light-atom interactions, the photoelectric effect, the Compton effect, the thermal radiation, etc. In particular, Planck’s law for the spectral energy density of thermal radiation and the Einstein A-coefficient for spontaneous emission are derived in the framework of classical field theory without using the concept of “photon”.

I show that the conventional corpuscular-statistical interpretation of atomic phenomena is only a misinterpretation of continuous deterministic processes.

These results show that quantum mechanics must be considered to be not a theory of particles but a classical field theory in the spirit of classical electrodynamics.

In conclusion, I show how Dirac equation can be coupled with Maxwell equation in order to construct the self-consistent Maxwell-Dirac theory.

mathematical physicsgeneral physicsquantum physics

Audience: researchers in the topic

( video )

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QM Foundations & Nature of Time seminar

Series comments: Description: Physics foundations discussion seminar

Current access link in th.if.uj.edu.pl/~dudaj/QMFNoT

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