The Story
Propose by Louis
de Broglie in 1924, the wave-matter dualism was intended to extend to material
particles the Einsteinian hypothesis on the dual wave and corpuscular character
of electromagnetic radiation. In its essential lines, dualism assigns to light
and material particles a dual wave and corpuscular nature, thus justifying the
simultaneous use of conceptually and formally different theories such as
Relativity and Wave Mechanics.
From 1927, dualism underwent
rigorous experimental testing using both beams of light and material particles.
However, the results have always confirmed two different physical realities
that can be thus synthesized:
(a) the photoelectric effect
studied by Einstein (1905) and the Compton effect (1923), highlight how at the
microscopic level the energy and momentum of a light signal cannot take on any
value, but only multiple values of discrete quantities. Light is
therefore formed by elementary corpuscles, photons, with energy and momentum
proportional to the frequency of electromagnetic radiation emitted;
(b) the analysis
of the image produced in the overlap of two secondary beams of light or
material particles of equal energy, produced by the subdivision of the same
primary beam, shows independently of the original nature of the beam used and
by its intensity, the formation of an interference figure consisting of a
succession of light and dark bands. This figure is justifiable only if the
light or matter of the beam propagates in the form of waves. In addition, the
reduction in the intensity of the primary beam to near-zero values shows that
the interference figure occurs independently of the intensity value but is
formed in the overlap of a very large number of point impacts, typical of a
corpuscular and non-undulating nature of matter and light.
While the result
(a) confirms the principle of energy quantization introduced by Max Planck in
1900, highlighting for light a corpuscular and non-wave nature as predicted by
Maxwell's electromagnetic theory, the result (b) clearly highlights for both
light and matter a dual wave and corpuscular nature.
To date, all
experiments have always confirmed the hypothesis introduced by de Broglie,
allowing physics to accept beyond all possible and reasonable doubts
quantization and wave-particle dualism as founding principles of quantum
thought and any other contemporary development.
In 1983, fifty-nine years after the publication
of his work, Louis de Broglie wrote in an article published in "Histoire
Générale des Sciences" [1], about that epic period of the history of
physics, he wrote: " The essential purpose ... was to arrive at a
synthetic theory of waves and matter in which the corpuscles appeared as a
particular behavior of a wave structure controlled by its propagation ... some
indications suggested precisely this path: the theory Hamilton-Jacobi,
developed ... in the context of classical analytical mechanics seemed to
indicate a close relationship between the movements of the material points and
the propagation of a wave; the intervention of integers in the quantization
formulas of the old quantum quantum theory suggested that the phenomena of
interference or resonance occurred in the stability of the motions of atomic
electrons, etc. Taking inspiration from these particularities, I was able to
lay the first foundations of wave mechanics and obtain with the help of
relativistic concepts, the relationships that link the energy and momentum of a
corpuscle to the frequency and wavelength that the mechanics hypotheses wave
led to associate it ...".
In an age of
strong changes in physical thought and transition between the determinism of
mechanics and the indeterminism typical of wave phenomena, Louis de Broglie
could not even do without facing the study of the new quantum phenomenology,
without attempting the path of mediation between the most current, brilliant
and conceptually incompatible theories of his era. In fact, it is
precisely their natural mutual conceptual and formal incompatibility,
especially with regard to the spatial location of a particle as opposed to the
non-location of the wave that describes it, that forces us to accept the dogma
of dualism, as the only possible way to understand and describe otherwise
inexplicable phenomena.
A year after de
Broglie's article, at a conference of Quantum Mechanics held in Amalfi, Jhon
Bell, who had been entrusted with the task of concluding the conference with a
speech, said: "... we are
in the presence of a clear profound incompatibility between the two pillars on
which contemporary science is based, (the Theory of Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics). I look forward to the roundtables in which the shocking technical
details of the latest developments will be left to reflect on this strange
situation. Perhaps a true synthesis between Quantum Mechanics and the Theory of
Relativity needs not only technical progress but a radical conceptual renewal."
Renewal that has its roots in the theorem due to Bell, which shows how two
identical particles are always related regardless of the distance that
separates them. Suppose we have a system with two particles, for example two
electrons of opposite spin, one up and one down. If we use a magnetic field to
change the spin orientation of one of the two particles, the spin of the other
also changes accordingly in the opposite direction. This seemingly
disconcerting result was confirmed by two historical experiments, the first
performed in 1972 by John Clauser and Stuart Freeman in the United States and the second
in 1981 by A. Aspect, P. Grangier and C. Roger at CERN. As inconceivable as it
may seem, there is a form of instant communication between the two particles,
such that by changing the spin of one, the spin of the other also changes. The
concept of "instant" change, however, implies the existence of a form
of communication at infinite speed between particles, a phenomenon absolutely
not in accordance with the fundamental principle of Relativity which stipulates
that the speed of light is an impassable limit in the transmission of energy,
but at the basis of all the current experiments of teleportation of matter, in
which through the process of entanglement it is possible to remotely replicate
photons, particles and atoms, destroying the originals and recreating others in
another place with the same characteristics. A phenomenon that Albert Einstein
amused to mock, calling it "ghost remote action ".
The conceptual
and phenomenological rupture between relativistic physics and quantum physics
is therefore a sure element of disturbance in the context of contemporary
physics. Precisely the phenomenon of wave-corpuscle dualism could in fact be
the border between the microscopic world, obedient to the laws of quantum
mechanics and the macroscopic world governed by the laws of mechanics,
electromagnetism and gravity. A border that hides perhaps the true nature of
matter? The challenge is to find this border and bring it down.
Bibliography
[1] Louis de
Broglie. “Histoire Générale des Sciences”. Tomo III, Vol II. Presses
Universitaires de France – Paris (1983).
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