View source for Questions Touching on the Fundamentals of Physics and Deserving an Answer

{{Infobox paper
| title = Questions Touching on the Fundamentals of Physics and Deserving an Answer
| author = [[Berthold W Schumacher]]
| keywords = [[dualism]], [[electron diffraction]], [[energy quanta]], [[hertzian waves]], [[h]], [[light quanta]], [[neutron diffraction]], [[quantum mechanics]], [[single-quantum optics]], [[waves]]
| published = 1988
| journal = [[Physics Essays]]
| volume = [[1]]
| number = [[1]]
| pages = 5-14
}}

==Abstract==

In this paper, the dualistic interpretation of electron diffraction effects plus other aspects of wave particle dualism are questioned. Certain alternative explanations, discussed here on the conceptual level, have apparently never been investigated. Analogies comparing electrons to macroscopic bullets cannot seriously be used. Electrons are inherently associated with their Coulomb field. If an electron approaches a periodic structure, in the simplest case a slit in a screen, it ?sends? its field ahead and will thereby ?see? the size and geometry of the structure. Before the electron even arrives, currents will be induced in the structure which, in turn, emit their own fields. These Hertzian electromagnetic fields exhibit their own interference patterns. (The lobes of the field of a dipole antenna are one example of this.) The electron must pass through these Hertzian wave fields with their interference structure. Conceptually, and until proven otherwise by rigorous mathematical analysis, may we not assume that this process can lead to discrete deflection angles for the electron, their magnitudes tied to the speed of the electron and to the size of the interacting structure? Obviously, any analysis will have to be based on transient and retarded field conditions and will not be simple. For atoms and neutrons, conditions will be quite similar, except for the quantitative side. In collisions, neutral atoms are deformed to multipole structures. Neutrons possess an inherent magnetic dipole field which, when moving, generates Hertzian waves. While electron diffraction may be based on (1) an always localizable particle, the electron, and (2) Hertzian wave fields for which interference effects are commonplace, the extension of these ideas to light quanta requires additional considerations, which are also discussed in this paper. In fact, they are discussed first. Assume the energy packages called light quanta are quite different from Hertzian waves. This does not preclude that they move with the same velocity as the Hertzian waves and carry a nonspreading electromagnetic field of a specific oscillatory frequency. It is well established that they are localized and do not spread their energy as does a macroscopic light beam, subject to the laws of thermodynamics. Assume further that Hertzian waves may have energies less than the quantized value hv associated with a quantum having the same oscillatory frequency. This has always been tacitly assumed in explaining crystal optics effects or the action of a lens on a single quantum passing in time. We can then construct conceptual models, for example, for two-path single quantum interference, that always leave the quantum on one of the two possible paths. In and around the material structures, which are absolutely necessary and always present where we see interference phenomena, Hertzian waves of the quantum frequency are induced by the quantum, the energy being supplied by a reduction in the quantum's velocity. These induced Hertzian waves are indirectly causing the interference effects by acting on the path of the quantum. It is fully realized that quantitative analyses of these concepts are required. Yet it should be equally realized that the questions raised by these conceptual models must be answered by just such analyses and not by reference to presently accepted concepts. This task exceeds the capacity of any one man and requires a collective effort of which this paper may be considered a beginning.

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