How does a particle wave collapse. Like does it suck up background energy at one point (at the speed of light) and reform into a particle, or what?
>>16786170have you heard about the hidden variables theory?
>>16786170Depends on the interpretation of QM you're using.>Like does it suck up background energy at one pointNo.
>>16786170That wavefunction is just some math that can be used to predict observations, and the math works. But if it actually described reality and a physical process no one has a fucking clue and people have been arguing about it for over a century.
>>16786239I'd say that with the results of the dual slit experiment the chances are that it does talk about an underlying process. To which I don't think enough attention is given to how it collapses.
It is always a wave. You can observe it as a particle if you only see where the E and M fields meet at 0. Or from one 0 to the next 0.
When it talks about the underlying process, what language does it use?
>>16786554The double-slit experiment doesn't imply that at all. All the math of QM tells you is the initial conditions and the measured result. It says absolutely nothing about what happens in the middle. That is what every interpretation of QM is arguing about, but there is zero proof for any of them.
>>16786764There is a wave. You wouldn't get the interference pattern on the double slit without a wave. That's an in between middle state inferred via the double slit.
>>16786170>Like does it suck up background energy at one pointThe collapse happens because of the discrete nature of energy.It does not violate conservation of energy.Consider a photon in the photoelectric effect. The photon's region of influence is spread out over an area of many electrons, but QM says the electrons can only accept a specific packet of energy.So exactly one photon of the right frequency will eject exactly one electron.Which electron will it be? That's a random variable, or the square of a wave function.The energy has to be absorbed somewhere, that's conservation of energy, and the quantum effect is that the energy isn't absorbed evenly, but rather is discrete, the collapse comes from a given electron absorbing the discrete packet of energy.So we say the photons position collapsed to the location of the electron it emitted.
>>16787081There is a wave *function*, it's pure math. That doesn't mean there is a physical wave.
