91福利

This year we commemorate the 210th anniversary of the celebrated Young’s two-slit experiment (1803) and the 100th anniversary of Bohr’s atomic model (1913), and the 90th anniversary of Compton’s experimental evidence of Einstein’s hypothesis on the quantisation of light (1923). However, more than 80 years since Heisenberg and Schrödinger wrote down the basic formulations of quantum mechanics, the operator formalism and the wave function equation, we still don’t fully understand how to interpret quantum mechanics. Is the probabilistic interpretation the only one permissible? How do we understand concepts such as the potentially super-luminal “speed” of the wave function collapse upon “measurement”? Do we really believe that C60 molecules and proteins used in modern two-slit experiments “split” and travel through both slits in order to give the required and observed interference patterns? Fortunately, alternative approaches exist, some of which, such as de Broglie-Bohm mechanics, even offer an ontological view of the world. In this PhysicsDay, we want to bring together some of the leading UK and EU researchers in the field to discuss recent advances in the field.