David Bohm struggles in Causality and Chance in Modern Physics to give a meaning to Quantum Mechanics in its probabilistic Copenhagen Interpretation CI based on Schrödinger's equation advocated by Bohr/Born/Heisenberg. Bohm expresses his main hang-up, which he shares with Schrödinger and Einstein (and myself), as follows:
- The Schrödinger wave equation does not describe a wave in ordinary 3d space, but instead a wave in an abstract $3N$-dimensional space with $N$ the number of particles.
- This is not really acceptable in a physical theory, and should at least be regarded as an artifice that one uses provisionally until one obtains a better theory in which everything is expressed once more in ordinary 3d space.
- By multidimensionality the wave function is uncomputable on any foreseeable computer. Claims that CI always agrees with observation cannot be verified.
- Atoms have fully deterministic excited states/energies with stable ground state/energy. No role for probabilities here.
- The generalisation of Schrödinger's equation to $N>1$ from the physical model for the Hydrogen atom with $N=1$ is performed with a stroke of a pen as a mathematical formality without physical reality. Real Quantum Mechanics presents a different generalisations with physical meaning. Real QM is computable and so elevates simulation and not observation as in CI to focal interest.
- Bohm tried to give a physical meaning to CI in the form of a pilot wave theory, but retained the uncomputable multidimensional wave function. Wheeler tried the idea of giving possibility the same reality as actuality in his Many-Worlds version of QM. The physics community could not embrace Bohm nor Wheeler although both tried (but without success) to give meaning to CI.
- The Nobel Physics Prize 2022 sells the idea of a 2nd quantum revolution into quantum information/computing based on multidimensional wave functions of immense richness/power, but reality may be lacking. Will it be a quantum jump into the void? Who will call the bet?
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