Hidden variables


• From the point of vue of wave packet reduction within hidden variables approach, as considered by L. De Broglie, it may be asked what happens in the case where the studied variable is the momentum, and that it is measured by means of a position measure.

Let us consider a source of photons with spherical symmetry and a detector used to measure the py component of the momentum, by means of the y coordinate of the impact point. One may then say that, the more far from the source is the detector, the more precise (for a constant precision on the y coordinate) is the measure of py (connected to the path from the source to the detector). On the opposite the deltaPy perturbation caused by this measure does not decrease since it depends only on the deltaY precision. The act of y measurement has disturbed the py value after the measurement, but the photon arrived at well defined y, and with well defined py (by the motion it has before).

It is thus possible to interpret this by assuming that parcicles do exist, that the y and py variables associated with them are defined at the same time, but that the values of these variables are accessible only by interactions, the symmetries of which (carried by the wave) are on the other hand subject to the rule  deltaY deltaPy > h.

This rejoins L. De Broglie's ideas about hidden variables, with this peculiarity that the relativistic instantaneousness and localeousness break the argument studied experimentally by A. Aspect [1, 2] : it would concern in this case “non local” hidden variables (with the classical meaning of this expression), the understanding of which would first require a re-foundation of our interpretation of space-time.

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References :

1. see as example :
    A. Aspect, J. Dalibard and G. Roger, “Expérimental test of Bell's inequalities using time-varying analysers”, Phys. Rev. Letters, Vol. 49, n° 25, p. 1804 (1982) ;
    O. Freire, “La bizarrerie quantique révélée par trois expériences”, La Recherche n° 400, september 2006.

2. A. Aspect and P. Grangier, “Des intuitions d'Einstein aux bits quantiques”, Pour la Science n° 326, december 2004 (article about  which, elsewhere, I fear alas that the importance of the decoherence is such that it practically forbids any utilization of a large number of intricated components).



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