A trajectory description of quantum processes. II: Applications. A Bohmian perspective (Q630647)

A century of quantum theory has shown that mathematical models of quantum physics adequately describes numerous physical phenomena. However, successes of physics do not come solely from its mathematical model, many of these successes become possible only due to physicists' intuition. This intuition helps the physicists predict the qualitative behavior of the corresponding phenomena, and it helps them come up with quantitative solutions -- by figuring out which terms and effects can be safely ignored in different situations. From this viewpoint, quantum physics is far from ideal, since many quantum phenomena contradict common sense intuition. The best known examples of such contradictions are Schrödinger's cat (that is neither dead nor alive) and seemingly faster-than-light transmission in Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, but similar counterintuitive behavior is present in many quantum phenomena. The authors show that many such phenomena become more intuitively clear if we accept Bohm's interpretation of Schrödinger's equations, in which the probability density \(\rho(x)=|\psi(x)|\) is interpreted as the density of the particles, and the phase of the wave function \(\psi(x)\) is related to the velocity of these particles. The motion of these particles is described by the Newton's equation, in which, to the usual potential function, we add an additional term depending on \(\psi(x)\). The corresponding mathematics was developed in Part I of this book [the authors, ibid. 850, 299 p. (2012; Zbl 1241.81001)]; this Part II applies this mathematics to main quantum phenomena. The authors start with the simplest quantum phenomena, such as a free particle, then move to interference and superposition, inference, tunneling effects, diffraction. etc. For each of these processes, the explicit description of several Bohm-style trajectories leads to an intuitively clear physical picture which, somewhat surprisingly, exhibits exactly the seemingly counter-intuitive features of the corresponding quantum phenomenon. Let me emphasize: the authors are \textit{not} proposing to change quantum equations, they just show how to make the resulting solutions more intuitively clear. For example, the tunnel effect -- the ability of quantum particles to penetrate the potential barrier even when their original kinetic energy was smaller than the barrier's potential -- becomes clearer when we see how the additional \(\psi\)-dependent term decreases the original in-penetrable potential energy barrier to a level quite affordable for the particles. The authors' approach not only helps better understand the physics, it also helps better understand numerous semi-heuristic approximate techniques which are used to solve multi-body Schrödinger equations -- in particular, techniques used in quantum chemistry.