Volume 5, Issue 2, pages 51-68
Daniel Shanahan [Show Biography]
Effects associated in quantum mechanics with a divisible probability wave are
explained as physically real consequences of the equal but opposite reaction
of the apparatus as a particle is measured. Taking as illustration a
Mach-Zehnder interferometer operating by refraction, it is shown that this
reaction must comprise a fluctuation in the reradiation field of complementary
effect to the changes occurring in the photon as it is projected into one or
other path. The evolution of this fluctuation through the experiment will
explain the alternative states of the particle discerned in self interference,
while the maintenance of equilibrium in the face of such fluctuations becomes
the source of the Born probabilities. In this scheme, the probability wave
is a mathematical artifact, epistemic rather than ontic, and akin in this
respect to the simplifying constructions of geometrical optics.
