Conceptual basis of quantum mechanics (Q501127)

This book is the English translation of a previous German edition [the author, Tutorium Quantenmechanik. Von einem erfahrenen Tutor -- für Physik- und Mathematikstudenten. Heidelberg: Springer Spektrum (2013; Zbl 1286.81005)], and in fact it is more an extensive tutorial -- for students of physics and mathematics -- with a bent on conceptual problems, than a book about the ``conceptual basis'' of quantum mechanics (QM). There is by now quite a lot of publications discussing the conceptual basis, the foundations and the philosophical implications of QM, and this may not be the most prominent feature of this book which has indeed many other merits in itself for the presentation of the topics and their ordering. The sections about the interpretations, instead, seem to this reviewer to be far from complete: in particular the probabilistic and stochastic conceptual aspects appear to be rather neglected, and this is nowhere so apparent as in the opening section. The author starts with a short discussion about reality and nonlocality, but despite its clearcut presentation this incipit could be a bit misleading. In fact, Bell's argumentations hold insofar as you use joint probabilities in a rather naive way. Even in classical probability -- independently from every QM reference -- there is room for well behaved 2-variate distributions NOT derivable from any unique 3-variate distribution (a point needed in the proof of Bell's argument, as recalled even in this book at the p. 5), and the way to calculate probabilities in QM from quantum states falls exactly in this category. This was pointed out as early as the 80's (see for instance in [\textit{L. Accardi} and \textit{A. Fedullo}, Lett. N. Cim. 34, 161 (1982)]), and it is by now one of the starting points of the inquiries in quantum probability. In this perspective Bell's inequality (1.1) can indeed be understood rather as a necessary condition to allow 2-variate distribution to be the marginals of some 3-variate, instead than as an indicator of either unreality or nonlocality. Even in this form, however, this result is startling enough because it points to destructive interferences among separate bits of information in acts of conditioning (which is never the case in classical probability and conditioning), namely to the foundations of the uncertainty principle, but it seems to have precious little to do with either reality or locality. It seems to point instead to an impossibility of organizing the quantum statistical data in what would be a unique Kolmogorovian probability space (if it existed, indeed, it would be trivially true that 2-variates are the marginals of some 3-variate), and consequently to the need for Hilbert spaces, state superpositions and self-adjoint operators instead of \(\sigma\)-algebras, probability measures and Bayesian conditioning. This reviewer is well aware of the fact that the idea of nonlocal -- or unreal -- QM is already a popular and a widespread one (maybe exactly because it is weird), but this is not his opinion: he is not so convinced that the dilemma nonlocality vs. unreality is a straightforward conclusion of the experimental violation of Bell's inequality. On a closer look, again, the fact that no example is known of actual non local (superluminal) interactions should rise the suspicion that the problem could lie elsewhere. In this broadened setting, there would be a third possibility beyond the two (1. Giving up reality, and 2. Giving up locality) proposed by the author at the end of the introductory section, namely: 3. Giving up the so called Kolmogorovian structure of probability spaces in favor of a quantum probabilistic one. This initial discussion, however, is almost immaterial for the subsequent presentation: its early prominence notwithstanding, it plays just the role of an indicator of the wonders to come from the QM, rather than that of a conceptual starting point requiring the development of an entirely new paradigm. On the other hand, it has been so also historically: from the violation of Bell's inequality one does not see why and how to embark in the definition of the Hilbert space machinery. We all know instead that the road to this building was rather different, and as always history has its rights. After the initial section, in fact, the book looks quite similar to a normal tutorial in the formal structures of QM, even if some new features can be spotted. In particular, it ``develops its matter from the general to the specific'' so that ``the main hurdle is taken right in the beginning and a double run-up is avoided''. Then, the book trods a path among predictable topics by posing questions and explaining why formal elements are needed: it appears to be pedagogically effective -- the text is also rich in examples, exercises (with solutions in an appendix) and self-check questions -- with an emphasis on a conceptual discussions on how the unfamiliar QM objects can be used to predict the results of the measurements. It looks however rather oriented towards the formal aspects of the theory, and less toward its underlying physical basis: for instance the two-slits experiments, the interference among amplitudes and their implications on the existence of particle trajectories seem to play no role whatsoever in the discussion, even in the section on the Feynman integral. The same could be said for the other physical phenomena requiring the introduction of QM (from the black body radiation, to the photoelectric effect or the line spectra of atoms and so on). In Part I, devoted to ``Formalism and interpretation'', the author starts with finite dimensional Hilbert spaces allowing to understand quite a lot of the QM without meddling from the beginning with its more elaborate mathematical problems. The topics run from an introduction to Hilbert spaces to Heisenberg and Schrödinger pictures, from measurement and uncertainty to tensor product of spaces. In particular, this also allows an early introduction -- but at this point characteristically unrelated to its more physical features -- of the concept of spin and hence qbit, entanglement and quantum information. Curiously enough, however, the author fails to mention here that these ideas historically stem out precisely from the discussions inspired in the 70's by the publication of the Bell inequality. In the subsequent chapter the usual functional machinery of QM is nicely exposed with a few fine prints discussed in the so called Nerd's corners. The fourth chapter is then devoted to a short review of the interpretations, and -- beyond the standard Copenhagen interpretation -- in particular, the author stops to discuss the many-world interpretation and the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation in its deterministic visitation of the Bohmian mechanics. Here again, the other probabilistic half of the sky (the Ballentine statistical interpretation, the Nelson stochastic mechanics derived from the de Broglie-Bohm ideas, the present inquiries in the field of quantum probability and so on) is conspisuously absent. Part II -- ``A single scalar particle in an external potential'' -- seems more standard (albeit always well presented), the most original feature being a short stopover between one- and three-dimensional problems in Chapter 6 where the author dwells for a while on the two-dimensional systems (usually neglected in the textbooks) as a ``simplified introduction into rotation symmetric potential, angular momentum, and separation of variables.'' It also contains a chapter on scattering theory. Part III is finally devoted to a selection of ``Advanced topics'': spin, electromagnetic interaction, perturbation theory, N-particle systems, path-integrals an Dirac equation. Some of these could look not so advanced when you just consider their titles, but at a closer glance their contents show that in fact they lend the occasion to open a window on topics whose complete handling would be beyond the pale for a tutorial in QM: Lie groups, Gauge invariance, Golden rule, Fock spaces and relativistic equations. For further reading, very short (at the present scale of the QM literature) lists of references are finally affixed at the end of a few selected chapters: less than fifteen titles -- often of standard and time-honored textbooks -- that could have been conveniently enlarged to broaden the scope of this otherwise attractive conceptual survey.