Becoming as a Possible Missing Link between Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Avshalom C. Elitzur

1. Becoming as a Possible Missing Link between Quantum Mechanics and RelativityAvshalom C. Elitzur

2. Outline • Becoming, Reality’s Most Evaded Element • Relativistic Considerations • Block Universe? Presentism? Neither. • Quantum Mechanical Paradoxes • Spatial • Temporal • The Hypothesis of Becoming and its Consequence • Spacetime “Growth” • Wave Function Preceding Spacetime • Relativistic Effects Dynamized • Clues for Field Theories

3. 1. Time’s Apparent Passage

4. Time: The Common ViewEvents Become and Go, One by One

5. Time: The Relativistic ViewAll Events Coexist along Time

6. Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States

7. Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States

8. Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States

9. x t Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States

10. x t Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States “Now”

11. Relativistic Contraction is a Consequence of the “Coexistence” of Past and Future States “Now”

12. The Block Universe Account of Time All events – past, present and future – have the same degree of existence. There is no privileged “Now.”

13. An Alternative to Block Universe:Presentism Only present events are real. The idea of four dimensions and notions such as “spacetime” and “world line” are mere metaphors.

14. The Cure is Worse than the Disease It is highly unlikely that all the relativistic relations are mere coincidences Spacetime is a physical entity, interacting with mass and giving rise to curvatures, singularities, etc.

15. Why Most Physicists Deny Becoming • It might entail a yet higher time (How fast does the “Now” move?) and so on to infinity of times • It seems to entail absolute simultaneity

16. Theoretical Lavishness: • Extra spatial dimensions • Hyperspaces • Multiverse • Etc. All within the Block Universe!

17. 2. Quantum Mechanics

18. Interference of a Single Particle The Mach-Zehnder Interferometer: • Photon (Wave Packet) Emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • One photon half is split • Second photon half is split • Destructive Interference • Constructive Interference • All photons (100%) reach the right-hand detector

19. Interference of a single particle The Delayed-Choice Experiment: • Photon (Wave Packet) Emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • The photon “halves” reach the detectors • Collapse (50%-50% right-left)

20. Interference of a single particle The Delayed-Choice Experiment: • Photon (Wave Packet) Emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • The photon “halves” reach the detectors • Collapse (50%-50% right-left)

21. Interference of a single particle The Delayed-Choice Experiment: • Photon (Wave Packet) Emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • One photon half is split • Second photon half is split • Destructive Interference • Constructive Interference • All photons (100%) reach the right-hand detector

22. In a Nutshell: Interference requires Ignorance about the path the particle took (The Uncertainty Principle)

23. Interaction-Free Measurement (Elitzur & Vaidman, 1993) When a bomb is inserted: • Photon (Wave Packet) Emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • “Collapse” • boom!

24. Interaction-Free Measurement When a bomb is inserted, scenario 2: • Photon (wave packet) is emitted • Photon is split into two and reflected • No Boom – uncertainty is reduced! • The remaining wave packet is split • “Forbidden” detector might click • Zeilinger et al., 1995: Efficiency brought close to 100%

25. Quantum Temporal Peculiarities HBT Experiment Schrödinger’s cat Delayed Choice

26. tf: Cat dead and decomposing tf: Cat alive, but lean and unhappy Schrödinger’s Cat as a Temporal Paradox OR t1: Lethal event occurring or not occurring t0: Cat and deadly machine sealed in box

27. Hanbury-Brown-Twiss Effect: • (HBT, 1958) Interference of two distant sources: • Even when the sources are so weak to produce a single photon at a time! • Coherent light emitted by two sources • Light is split by the beam splitter • Interference • All light reaches the same detector

28. |x↑> |x↓> |y↑> |x↑> |x↓> The Hardy Atom • An atom is prepared to be in the state |y↑> • It is then split by a Stern-Gerlach Magnet into |x↓> and |x↑> • The two halves of the wave function are confined into boxes • That are transparent for photons but opaque for the atoms • One of the boxes is placed on one arm of an interferometer • Such that if the atom is in that box and if the photon passes in that arm, absorption occurs with probability 1. • Two Hardy atoms can be entangled into an EPR pair

29. Time-Reversed EPR(Elitzur, Dolev & Zeilinger 2001) • Two Hardy atoms in x-spin superposition (but not entangled) • “Forbidden” detector clicks • Where did the photon come from? Ignorance begets entanglement! • The atoms are entangled (i.e. violate Bell’s Inequality) • Giving rise to EPR with the entangling event not in the past but in the future no interference interference … or better call it: RPE

30. The Bell Inequality Violations The results predicted by QM:

31. The Quantum Liar Paradox • To prove non-locality, test the two Hardy atoms for Bell Inequality • Use Spin measurement in 3 directions relative to the x-axis: 00, 300, and -300 • For 00, just inspect the two boxes (“which box” measurement) • For 300 and -300 directions, re-unite the boxes, then split according to desired direction, and finally measure position

32. The Quantum Liar Paradox • 00 direction (“which box”) measurement allows only one history for the photon

33. The Quantum Liar Paradox • 00 direction (“which box”) measurement on the left atom • But a different direction (300, -300) measurement on the right atom • Here too, there are Bell Inequality violations… • Which require a non-local effect between the left and the right atoms!

34. The Quantum Liar Paradox So, you end up with the following history: • One atom is found to have blocked the photon’s path. • Hence, it appears that it could not interact with the other atom, • and therefore should not be entangled with it. • But, by violating Bell’s inequality, its “having blocked the photon” was affected by the measurement of the other atom! Which is logically equivalent to saying…

35. THIS SENTENCE HAS NEVER BEEN WRITTEN :-)

36. The Quantum Liar Paradox,Zoller & Cirac’s system • Two excited atoms A1 and A2 reside in cavities facing a beam-splitter • One detector clicks, source of the photon uncertain • Thereby entangling the two atoms • An orthogonal measurement to excited/ground is introduced • EPR • Bell-inequality violated • The liar paradox all over again

37. The Quantum Liar Paradox,Zoller & Cirac’s system • One atom is found to be excited, which seems to indicate that it emitted no photon • Hence, it could not interact with the other atom and should not be entangled with it. • But, by violating Bell’s inequality, its “having preserved its photon” is due to entanglement with the other atom!

38. Properties of a Quantum System between Measurements(Aharonov et al.) “Every quantum event is visited twice, once by the state vector coming from the pre-selection and then again by the vector coming backwards from the post-selection” (Aharonov, personal communication).

39. Большая Советская Энциклопедия

40. 3. The Road Less Travelled

41. The Assumption of Becoming Events are created anew, one after another, in spacetime, according to their causal order. At any moment in time which one perceives as “Now,” future events are not only unknown but objectively inexistent, to be created later as the Now “advances.”

42. Becoming – The Ultimate Compactification? It may make work just as well as extra space dimensions

43. The Machian Consequence Where there are no events, there is neither space nor time (Mach) If there are no future events at any “Now,” there is no spacetime in the future either. Spacetime must be “growing” in the future direction

44. A Cosmological Ring Spacetime is preceded and bounded by nothingness

45. No Threat of Infinite Times Let presentism hold for the 4-dimensional growing spacetime

46. “Time and space are necessary forms of any thought ” and of any PowerPoint slide”

47. Never spatialize time!

48. Block Universe

49. Naïve Becoming

50. Let’s Go Quantum: Quantum interaction takes place beyond the “Now,” hence outside of spacetime. “Collapse” gives rise not only to the particle in its location, but to all the points in empty space where it could have been. The spacetime zone associated with this interaction emerges only as its consequence.