Published April 1986 | Version v1
Journal article

Problems in quantum foundations in the light of gauge theories

Creators

  • 1. Center for Particle Theory, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas 78712

Description

We review the issues of nonseparability and seemingly acausal propagation of information in EPR, as displayed by experiments and the failure of Bell's inequalities. We show that global effects are in the very nature of the geometric structure of modern physical theories, occurring even at the classical level. The Aharonov-Bohm effect, magnetic monopoles, instantons, etc. result from the topology and homotopy features of the fiber bundle manifolds of gauge theories. The conservation of probabilities, a supposedly highly quantum effect, is also achieved through global geometry equations. The EPR observables all fit in such geometries, and space-time is a truncated representation and is not the correct arena for their understanding. Relativistic quantum field theory represents the global action of the measurement operators as the zero-momentum (and therefore spatially infinitely spread) limit of their wave functions (form factors). We also analyze the collapse of the state vector as a case of spontaneous symmetry breakdown in the apparatus-observed state interaction

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Found. Phys.
Journal Volume
16
Journal Issue
4
Series
Found. Phys.
Journal Page Range
361-378
ISSN
0015-9018
CODEN
FNDPA

INIS

Country of Publication
United States
Country of Input or Organization
United States
INIS RN
17083996
Subject category
S71: CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS;
Descriptors DEI
BELL THEOREM; CAUSALITY; EIGENSTATES; GAUGE INVARIANCE; GLOBAL ANALYSIS; INSTANTONS; MATHEMATICAL MANIFOLDS; QUANTUM MECHANICS; SPACE-TIME
Descriptors DEC
INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES; MATHEMATICS; MECHANICS; QUASI PARTICLES