Einstein's Responsibilities for Wave-Particle Duality
| Scientific Paper | |
|---|---|
| Title | Einstein\'s Responsibilities for Wave-Particle Duality |
| Read in full | Link to paper |
| Author(s) | Constantin Antonopoulos |
| Keywords | {{{keywords}}} |
| Published | 2010 |
| Journal | Proceedings of the NPA |
| Volume | 7 |
| Number | 2 |
| No. of pages | 9 |
| Pages | 651-659 |
Read the full paper here
Abstract
In his explanation of the Photo-Electric Effect Einstein defines his photons as ?energy quanta which are localised at points in space? and possessed of a frequency E = hv at the very same time. (Rbv/N in his text.) Thus we are told that energy is quantized, because rather than a field spreading continuously over a region, ?light is discontinuously distributed in space?. [Einstein, 1965 (1905), p. 368] Planck's notion of quantization meant the discrete spectrum of eigen states (or eigen frequencies) of a single oscillator, sufficient in itself to make quantization manifest. But in order that a photon can make its own ?quantization' manifest it needs another photon. Alone it is just a speck in space. In Planck's original it would not be enough, it would not even be relevant, to call cars in a car park ?quantized', mainly because they are ?discontinuously distributed in space'. My aunt and I are thus distributed. Are we quantized? To Einstein it seems we must be. Yet, albeit discontinuously distributed at points in space, photons have a ...frequency in this new setting! I cannot even begin to fathom how anything localized at a point can have a frequency, but what I do fathom is how Duality sprang forth from precisely this infected womb, now weirdly impregnated by an unlovely hybrid. To get back to QM as it was initially conceived, I reinterpret E = hv, now Et = h, and p = h/l, now pl = h, as alternative definitions of quantized action, committed to neither waves nor particles. I conclude with what Duality really was in the mind of the man so wrongly accused for its introduction: Niels Bohr. Namely, it is but the side product of Indivisibility (?wholeness' more frequently in his writings) - not a primitive QM axiom at all.