Abstract
Although there are an increasing number of physicists who are dissatisfied with Bohr’s complementarity, complementarity nevertheless remains an essential element of the commonly accepted interpretation of the quantum theory. Complementarity can be criticised on many grounds, but the main motivating element for me to seek an alternative interpretation is the following. I take Bohr’s complementarity to deny the possibility of a description of underlying physical reality, or equivalently, to deny that a single well-defined model consistent with the quantum theory is possible.1
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Notes
See, for example, Bohr (1928; 1934, especially p. 96; 1949; 1963) and Jammer (1974, especially pp. 98–99). My views on complementarity are discussed at length in Kaloyerou (1992).
The equivalence of the field Schrödinger equation to the imposition of non-zero commutation relations is not normally stated, but in older field theory texts the field Schrödinger equation (though not called this) is at least written down (Heitler 1954, 61; Schweber et al. 1955 ). The equivalence is pointed to, first, by analogy with the nonrelativistic quantum theory where the Schrödinger equation underlies the operator formalism and, second, by the fact that expectation values calculated from the wave functional obtained by solving the field Schrödinger equation (in practice, in its normal mode form) are the same as those calculated by the usual operator methods of field theory.
Notation: Vectors are written in boldface. The functional derivative with respect to the vector potential is denoted by S/SA = (S/SA,)i + (S/SAy)j + (S/SAz)k. The volume element for integration is denoted by dx = dxdydz. A field function at the point x’ is denoted by A’ = A(x’, t).
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© 1996 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Kaloyerou, P.N. (1996). An Ontological Interpretation of Boson Fields. In: Cushing, J.T., Fine, A., Goldstein, S. (eds) Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Theory: An Appraisal. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 184. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8715-0_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8715-0_11
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