EVERYTHING TO KNOW ABOUT QUANTUM PHYSICS

Quantum physics is a branch of physics also known as

quantum mechanics or quantum theory.

Mechanics is that part of physics concerned with stuff that

moves, from cannonballs to tennis balls, cars, rockets, and

planets. Quantum mechanics is that part of physics which

describes the motions of objects at molecular, atomic, and

sub-atomic levels, such as photons and electrons.

Although quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful

scientific theory, on which much of our modern,

tech-obsessed lifestyles depend, it is also completely mad.

Read more about quantum physics:

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● Quantum field theory: "An unholy crossbreed between quantum
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● Dead and alive: why it's time to rethink quantum physics
The theory quite obviously works, but it appears to leave us

chasing ghosts and phantoms, particles that are waves and

waves that are particles, cats that are at once both alive and

dead, lots of seemingly spooky goings-on, and a desperate

desire to lie down quietly in a darkened room.

If you’ve ever wondered what is it about quantum theory that

makes it so baffling to many, here’s a brief summary of

quantum in simple terms.

The history of quantum mechanics

We now know that all matter is composed of atoms. Each

atom is in turn made up of electrons ‘orbiting’ a nucleus

consisting of protons and neutrons. Atoms are discrete. They

are ‘localised’: ‘here’ or ‘there’.

But towards the end of the 19th Century, atoms were really

rather controversial. In fact, it was a determination to refute

the existence of atoms that led the German physicist Max

Planck to study the properties and behaviour of so-called

‘black-body’ radiation.

What he found in an ‘act of desperation’ in late-1900 turned

him into a committed atomist, but it took a few more years for

the real significance of his discovery to sink in.

Planck had concluded that radiation is absorbed and emitted

as though it is composed of discrete bits which he called

quanta. In 1905, Albert Einstein went further. He speculated

that the quanta are real – radiation itself comes in discrete

lumps of light-energy. Today we call these lumps photons.

Is light a wave or a particle?

Einstein’s hypothesis posed a bit of a problem. There was an

already well-established body of evidence in favour of a wave

theory of light. The key observation is called the 'double slit

experiment'.
Push light through a narrow aperture or slit and it will squeeze

through, bend around at the edges and spread out beyond. It

‘diffracts’.

Cut two slits side-by-side and we get interference. Waves

diffracted by the two slits produce an alternating pattern of

light and dark bands called interference fringes. This kind of

behaviour is not limited to light – such wave interference is

easily demonstrated using water waves.

But waves are inherently delocalised: they are ‘here’ and

‘there’. Einstein’s hypothesis didn’t overturn all the evidence

for the delocalised wave-like properties of light. What he was

suggesting is that a complete description somehow needs to

take account of its localised, particle-like properties, too.

So, light acts like both a wave and a particle.

In 1923, French physicist Louis de Broglie made a bold

suggestion. If light waves can also be particles, could particles

like electrons also be waves? This was just an idea, but he

was able to use it to develop a direct mathematical

relationship between an electron’s wave-like property

(wavelength) and a particle-like property (momentum).

But this was not a fully-fledged ‘wave-particle’ theory of

matter. That challenge fell to Erwin Schrödinger, whose

formulation – first published early in 1926 and called wave

mechanics – is still taught to science students today.

What is a wave function?

Schrödinger’s theory is really the classical theory of waves in

which we introduce some quantum conditions using de

Broglie’s relation. The result is Schrödinger’s wave equation,

in which the motion of a particle such as an electron is

calculated from its wave function.

Right from the very beginning, physicists were scratching their

heads about Schrödinger’s wave function.

In classical mechanics, there are no real issues with the way

we interpret the concepts represented in the theory, such as

energy and momentum (which are called physical

observables) and their relation to the properties of the objects

that possess them.

Read more about the quantum world:

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● The quest for quantum gravity: why being wrong is essential to
science

Want to calculate the classical momentum of an object flying

through the air at a fixed speed? Easy. Measure the object’s

mass and its speed and multiply these together. Job done.

But what if you want to know the momentum of an electron

moving freely in a vacuum? In quantum mechanics we

calculate this by performing a specific mathematical operation

on the electron’s wave function.

Such operations are mathematical recipes, which we can

think of as ‘keys’ which unlock the wave function (depicted in

this animation as a box), releasing the observable before

closing again.

The operation is a key that 'unlocks' the wave function

We calculate the momentum by opening the box using the

‘momentum key’. A different observable will require a different

key.

Do particles really behave like waves?

So, if electrons behave like waves, can they be diffracted? If

we push a beam of electrons through two slits side-by-side

will we see interference fringes on a distant screen? What if

we limit the intensity of the beam so that, on average, only

one electron passes through the slits at a time. What then?

What we see is at first quite comforting. Each electron

passing through the slits registers as a single spot on the

screen, telling us that ‘an electron struck here’. This is

perfectly consistent with notion of electrons as particles, as it

seems they pass – one by one – through one or other of the

slits and hit the screen in a seemingly random pattern.

Interference patterns appearing in a double slit experiment
But wait. The pattern isn’t random. As more and more

electrons pass through the slits we cross a threshold. We

begin to see individual dots group together, overlap and

merge. Eventually we get a two-slit interference pattern of

alternating bright and dark fringes.

Alternatively, we conclude that the wave nature of the electron

is an intrinsic behaviour. Each individual electron behaves as

a wave, described by a wave function, passing through both

slits simultaneously and interfering with itself before striking

the screen.
So, how are we supposed to know precisely where the next

electron will appear?

Can a particle be in two places at once?

Schrödinger had wanted to interpret the wave function

literally, as the theoretical representation of a ‘matter wave’.

But to make sense of one-electron interference we must

reach for an alternative interpretation suggested later in 1926

by Max Born.

Born reasoned that in quantum mechanics the wave

function-squared is a measure of the probability of ‘finding’ its’

associated electron in a certain spot.

The alternating peaks and troughs of the electron wave

translate into a pattern of quantum probabilities – in this

location (which will become a bright fringe) there’s a higher

probability of finding the next electron, and in this other

location (which will become a dark fringe) there’s a very low or

zero probability of finding the next electron.

Read more about physics:

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Before an electron strikes the screen, it has a probability of

being found ‘here’, ‘there’ and ‘most anywhere’ where the

square of the wave function is bigger than zero. This

probability of many states existing at the same time is known

as 'quantum superposition'.

Does this mean that an individual electron can be in more

than one place at a time? No, not really. It is true to say that it

has a probability of being found in more than one place at a

time. And, if we want to interpret the wave function as a real

physical thing, there is a sense in which this is delocalised or

distributed.

But if by ‘individual electron’ we’re referring to an electron as a

particle, then there is a sense in which this doesn’t exist as

such until the wave function interacts with the screen, at

which point it ‘collapses’ and the electron appears ‘here’, in

only one place.

Why is probability important in quantum

physics?

One more thing. That there’s a 50 percent probability that a

tossed coin will land ‘heads’ simply means that it has two

sides and we have no way of knowing (or easily predicting)

which way up it will land. This is a classical probability born of

ignorance.

We can be confident that the coin continues to have two sides

– heads and tails – as it spins through the air, but we’re

ignorant of the exact details of its motion so we can’t predict

with certainty which side will land face up. In theory, we could,

if we knew exactly how hard you flipped it at exactly what

angle, and at exactly what height you would catch it.

Quantum probability is thought to be very different. When we

toss a quantum coin we might actually be quite

knowledgeable about most of the details of its motion, but we

can’t assume that ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ exist before the coin has

landed, and we look.

So, it doesn't matter exactly how much information you have

about the coin toss, you will never be able to say with any

certainty what the result will be, because it's not

pre-determined like in a classical system.

Einstein deplored this seeming element of pure chance in

quantum mechanics. He famously declared that: ‘God does

not play dice’.

And then, in 1927, the debates began. What is the wave

function and how should it be interpreted? What is quantum

mechanics telling us about the nature of physical reality? And

just what is this thing called reality, anyway?