Where intuition leads, physics follows presented by Keka Chakraborty, Pondicherry, India 14 th November, 2009

Light & Photon – Wave & Particle

Wave TheoryQuantum theory Pattern of fringes: The interference bands comes from the variations of intensity, (I ∞ A 2, square of the amplitude), of the resultant wave at each point on the screen. The interference comes from the variations in the probability, P, of a photon striking at different points on the screen. Role of the slits: To act as two coherent sources of the waves that interfere on the screen. To present two potential routes by which a photon can pass from the source to the screen. How do we correlate? We say, N ∞ A 2 (square of amplitude i.e. intensity, N is the number of photons striking a particular point on the screen). So P ∞ A 2 (= A A A 1 A 2 cos ф)  where A is the amplitude of the compound wave formed by their superpositions. If the probabilities are taken independently (if slits were open one at a time) and summed up (P 1 +P 2 ) then it would become two diffraction patterns of two single slits (A 1 2 +A 2 2 ) and would miss this 2A 1 A 2 cos ф.

Strange things are observed The interference pattern is maintained with a low power beam shooting one photon at a time. (Later Feynman has repeated this experiment with electrons producing the same results). What are the possibilities? Photons split and become two and go through both the slits? (Answer is “No”, it has been proved by a detector that emits a signal when struck by a photon, it is found that those signals have the same intensity, also two detectors next to two slits never simultaneously record the passing of a photon) Some photons pass through one slit and some through the other? – but then Taylor’s experiment with one slit open at a time, created only two adjacent overlapping single slit diffraction patterns. So, interference pattern is not merely the sum of the distribution of the photons through two slits. Then, both slits were kept open and a detector was placed to detect, which slit a particular photon is going through, the interference pattern is broken!!! leaving the two single slit diffraction patterns alone. So uncertainty (undetermined) of the path of the photon is accompanied by the coherence of the two light sources (slits)??? The moment it is made certain – it behaves the same as the incoherent and/or independent sources would behave.

Locality Paradox God does not play dice – says Einstein. In his opinion, if photons actually exist, their motion should be determinable. The quantum theory of light deals with light polarization by assigning an intrinsic angular momentum or spin to the photons. Photon spin can be of two types, parallel or anti- parallel. Einstein says that, suppose a stationary particle emits two photons, part, back-to-back, in opposite directions. Per the conservation of angular momentum the photons will spin in opposite directions, such that their sum be zero. So if the spin of one is measured, the spin of the other will be known too.

Locality Paradox (continued… 2) However, Copenhagen interpretation (Niels Bohr) asserts that, each photon has an equal probability of being in the parallel or anti- parallel spin orientation. Light is un- polarized if we cannot determine its polarization. But that does not mean that un-polarized light have an equal mixture of parallel-spin and anti-parallel-spin photons. Being un-polarized is a property of each photon in a beam of un-polarized light.

Locality Paradox (continued… 3) Therefore, when passing through a calcite crystal, each photon has a 50% chance of emerging in one or the other polarized beams. Just as we do not know through which slit a photon passes in Young's experiment - likewise, we cannot tell whether a particular photon was emitted with its spin in one orientation or another. All we can say is that each photon has a 50% chance of being polarized in one orientation or the other. When the spin of one of the photons is actually measured, it immediately determines the spin orientation of both photons.

Locality Paradox (continued… 4) But what if the two photons had travelled some distance from one another when the measurement was made? How does the second photon come to know that a measurement has been made and it has to spin according to that? This issue became known as Locality Paradox. The instantaneous communication from a distance violates special theory of relativity, as it had to travel faster than light. (And what if there were two observers? What if afterwards when the observers met, it is shown that the second measurement happened before the first? What if they never met??? Is Copenhagen interpretation depending on the single observer notion?)

Locality Paradox (continued… 5) Many experiments of the kind suggested by Einstein have been carried out ever since. Their setup ruled out the possibility of any link between the production of the photons and the measurements made upon them or that the detectors could have affected the findings. After so many years - that spooky Copenhagen interpretation still could not be violated.

Symmetry and Asymmetry of Nature C-symmetry (matter/antimatter), P- Symmetry (point reflection), T-symmetry (Time reversal transformation symmetry ). CP-violation (weak forces, radioactive decay) & T-violation ( macroscopic violation by second law of thermodynamics, a dynamic law of nature; or black holes, due to the initial condition of our universe )

Symmetry and Asymmetry of Nature (continued) CPT symmetry  The implication of CPT symmetry is that a "mirror-image" of our universe — with all objects having their positions reflected by an imaginary 3-D point reflector, all momenta reversed (corresponding to a time inversion) and with all matter replaced by antimatter (corresponding to a charge inversion)— would evolve under exactly our physical laws. The CPT transformation turns our universe into its "mirror image" and vice versa. CPT symmetry is recognized to be a fundamental property of physical laws. In order to preserve this symmetry, every violation of the combined symmetry of two of its components (such as CP) must have a corresponding violation in the third component (such as T); in fact, mathematically, these are the same thing. Thus violations in T symmetry are often referred to as CP violations.

CPT-violation – Relativity violation in scales below nanometer (space-time is not uniform in all directions). Space-time has its inherent direction, sometimes referred to as Relativity-violation-vector. Even light could be nothing but the oscillations of these background vectors.

An Overview (as seen by the presenter)  Time and Space are that one Conscious-Being viewing itself in extension, subjectively as Time, objectively as Space…Sri Aurobindo (Life Divine) Mechanical/Relativistic UniverseQuantum/Dynamic Universe

Crazy Stuff Does Quantum theory suggest that what the observer will do in the future defines what happens in the past? (John Wheeler) Balance between Quantum (probability based) information loss in the opposite direction of light’s movement and Black hole information loss in the direction of light’s movement …suggested by Roger Penrose (Road to Reality) Even light could be nothing but the oscillations of the background vectors !!! …modern scientists dealing with Relativity violation. Hawking radiation (evaporating black hole) & white hole, Vacuum fluctuations…Stephen Hawking Dark matter, WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles), MACHOs (Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Objects), Virtual Particles, Trans-Planckian problem (particles emitted by black hole, if traced back to the horizon, must have had an infinite frequency???)…

Interesting insights The common-sense idea that there is an objective reality out there all the time is a fallacy. When reality and knowledge are entangled, the question of when something becomes real cannot be answered in a straightforward manner …Paul Davies (About Time) Relationship between mind and matter without reducing one to nothing but a function or aspect of the other (such reduction commonly takes the forms of materialism which reduces mind, for example, to an 'epiphenomenon' having no real effect on matter, and of idealism, which reduces matter to some kind of thought, for example, in the mind of God) …David Bohm The essential feature of this idea (the notion of the enfolded or implicate order) was that the whole universe is in some way enfolded in everything and that each thing is enfolded in the whole…David Bohm

Interesting insights continued Niels Bohr (1934, 1958) has made a very subtle analysis …, he treats the entire process of observation as a single phenomenon, which is a whole that is not further analyzable. For Bohr, this implies that the mathematics of the quantum theory is not capable of providing an unambiguous (i.e. precisely definable) description of an individual quantum process, but rather, that it is only an algorithm yielding statistical predictions concerning the possible results of an ensemble of experiments …David Bohm The implicate order is not static but basically dynamic in nature, in a constant process of change and development …David Bohm Physics should be limited to the description of the correlations between perceptions …Niels Bohr

Lets take a look “God does not play dice”. – Why NOT? What compels us to think – that God is an artist and not a player? Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one ( Albert Einstein )…Who is under the illusion? Why? Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence...Carl Sagan “Quantum theory suggests…What we will do in future defines what happens in the past…” – Are we missing the fact that we did measurements in the past too? In studies, don’t we compare between past and future measurements? Having two observers measuring twin photon’s movement, is abstract – we are trying to prove matter’s incapacity to present the property of coherence to some dream characters who are also incoherent observers.

Lets take a look (continued…1) We assume that if we divide and fragment matter, it will become simpler – but does it? What is the real difference between information potentially active (quantum probability) and actually active (caught by us only through measurements???). Are we equating the word actuality as becoming? Is this why time is something we cannot go behind - psychologically?

Lets take a look (continued…2) A "systematic fault“ - it is everywhere and nowhere… You may say "I see a problem here, so I will bring my thoughts to bear on this problem". But "my" thought is part of the system. It has the same fault as the fault I'm trying to look at, or a similar fault. Thought is constantly creating problems that way and then trying to solve them. But as it tries to solve them it makes it worse because it doesn’t notice that it's creating them, and the more it thinks, the more problems it creates...David Bohm – but what is the origin of this erring mind? What is its purpose? Where/what is the solution?

Time for a break? A friend and yet too great wholly to know, She walked in their front towards a greater light, Their leader and queen over their hearts and souls, One close to their bosoms, yet divine and far. Admiring and amazed they saw her stride Attempting with a godlike rush and leap Heights for their human stature too remote Or with a slow great many-sided toil Pushing towards aims they hardly could conceive; Yet forced to be the satellites of her sun They moved unable to forego her light, …Sri Aurobindo (Savitri)

Sri Aurobindo (1) In a certain sense Matter is unreal and non- existent; that is to say, our present knowledge, idea and experience of Matter is not its truth, but merely a phenomenon of particular relation between our senses and the all-existence in which we move. Matter is substance of the one Conscious-Being phenomenally divided within itself by the action of a universal Mind,¹ —a division which the individual mind repeats and dwells in, but which does not abrogate or at all diminish the unity of Spirit or the unity of Energy or the real unity of Matter.

Sri Aurobindo (2) earth-existence cannot be the result of the human mind which is itself the result of earth-existence. material substance, is the form in which Mind acting through sense contacts the Conscious Being of which it is itself a movement of knowledge.

Sri Aurobindo (3) however brute and void of sense it seems to us, it is yet, to the secret experience of the consciousness hidden within it, delight of being offering itself to this secret consciousness as object of sensation in order to tempt that hidden godhead out of its secrecy. Being manifest as substance, force of Being cast into form, into a figured self- representation of the secret self-consciousness, delight offering itself to its own consciousness as an object,— what is this but Sachchidananda? Matter is Sachchidananda represented to His own mental experience as a formal basis of objective knowledge, action and delight of existence.

Sri Aurobindo (4) There are, quite certainly, other states even of Matter itself; there is undoubtedly an ascending series of the divine gradations of substance; there is the possibility of the material being transfiguring itself through the acceptation of a higher law than its own which is yet its own because it is always there latent and potential in its own secrecies.

Sri Aurobindo (5) We must judge of existence not by what we mentally conceive, but by what we see to exist. And the purest, freest form of insight into existence as it is shows us nothing but movement. Two things alone exist, movement in Space, movement in Time, the former objective, the latter subjective. Extension is real, duration is real, Space and Time are real. Even if we can go behind extension in Space and perceive it as a psychological phenomenon, as an attempt of the mind to make existence manageable by distributing the indivisible whole in a conceptual Space, yet we cannot go behind the movement of succession and change in Time.

Sri Aurobindo (6) For that is the very stuff of our consciousness. We are and the world is a movement that continually progresses and increases by the inclusion of all the successions of the past in a present which represents itself to us as the beginning of all the successions of the future,—a beginning, a present that always eludes us because it is not, for it has perished before it is born. What is, is the eternal, indivisible succession of Time carrying on its stream a progressive movement of consciousness also indivisible.¹ Duration then, eternally successive movement and change in Time, is the sole absolute. Becoming is the only being.

Sri Aurobindo (7) In reality, this opposition of actual insight into being to the conceptual fictions of the pure Reason is fallacious. If indeed intuition in this matter were really opposed to intelligence, we could not confidently support a merely conceptual reasoning against fundamental insight. But this appeal to intuitive experience is incomplete. It is valid only so far as it proceeds and it errs by stopping short of the integral experience. So long as the intuition fixes itself only upon that which we become, we see ourselves as a continual progression of movement and change in consciousness in the eternal succession of Time. We are the river, the flame of the Buddhist illustration.

Sri Aurobindo (8) But there is a supreme experience and supreme intuition by which we go back behind our surface self and find that this becoming, change, succession are only a mode of our being and that there is that in us which is not involved at all in the becoming. Not only can we have the intuition of this that is stable and eternal in us, not only can we have the glimpse of it in experience behind the veil of continually fleeting becomings, but we can draw back into it and live in it entirely, so effecting an entire change in our external life, and in our attitude, and in our action upon the movement of the world.

Sri Aurobindo (9) And this stability in which we can so live is precisely that which the pure Reason has already given us, although it can be arrived at without reasoning at all, without knowing previously what it is,—it is pure existence, eternal, infinite, indefinable, not affected by the succession of Time, not involved in the extension of Space, beyond form, quantity, quality,—Self only and absolute.

Sri Aurobindo (10) The pure existent is then a fact and no mere concept; it is the fundamental reality. But, let us hasten to add, the movement, the energy, the becoming are also a fact, also a reality. The supreme intuition and its corresponding experience may correct the other, may go beyond, may suspend, but do not abolish it. We have therefore two fundamental facts of pure existence and of world-existence, a fact of Being, a fact of Becoming. To deny one or the other is easy; to recognise the facts of consciousness and find out their relation is the true and fruitful wisdom.

Sri Aurobindo (11) Stability and movement, we must remember, are only our psychological representations of the Absolute, even as are oneness and multitude. The Absolute is beyond stability and movement as it is beyond unity and multiplicity. But it takes its eternal poise in the one and the stable and whirls round itself infinitely, inconceivably, securely in the moving and multitudinous. World-existence is the ecstatic dance of Shiva which multiplies the body of the God numberlessly to the view: it leaves that white existence precisely where and what it was, ever is and ever will be; its sole absolute object is the joy of the dancing.