Retrocausality

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Recorded: 3/3/2018 Released: 7/25/2018

Randy talks to Jim about retrocausality in quantum physics -- how does the future affect the past? In particular, they talk about the ideas of Huw Price and Ken Wharton on using temporal boundary conditions to constrain the wave function through its initial and final boundary conditions, effectively creating quantum harmonics in the time domain. They also discuss what this means in terms of the de Broglie-Bohm hypothesis, the multiple worlds interpretation, and Yakir Aharonov's interpretation in Quantum Paradoxes.

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Notes:

1. The papers we read for this program:

• Wharton, K., "Time Symmetric Boundary Conditions and Quantum Foundations" Symmetry 2, 272 (2010). [arXiv]
• Price H, "Does Time-Symmetry Imply Retrocausality? How the Quantum World Says "Maybe"" Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics B 43, 75 (2012). [arXiv]
• Evans, P., K. Wharton, and H. Price, "New Slant on the EPR-Bell Experiment" British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64, 297 (2013). [arXiv]
• Leifer, M. and M. Pusey, "Is a time symmetric interpretation of quantum theory possible without retrocausality?" Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics B 43, 297 (2012). [arXiv]

2. Books discussed in the program:

• Aharonov, Quantum Paradox [PhysicsFMReview]
• Bohm, Quanatum Theory
• Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Qunatum Mechanics [PhysicsFM Review]
• Goldstein, Classical Mechanics

3. Huw Price also wrote a book about the philosophy of time called Time's Arrow and Archimedes' Point that, according to the plane ticket I was using as a bookmark, I last read in 2003.

4. A popular book I recently read on the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation and endorsing non-locality is Jean Bricmont's Quantum Sense and Nonsense.

5. Please visit and comment on our subreddit, and if you can help us keep this going by contributing to our Patreon, we'd be grateful.

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Tunneling Time

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Recorded: 11/25/2017 Released: 7/6/2018

Jim and Randy discuss the tunneling time problem: just how long does quantum tunneling take? No definitive answer to this question exists, but people have been trying to answer it for at least eighty years -- with answers that span from instantaneous to subluminal. In this episode, we discuss several different ideas and how experiments at ETH-Zürich have helped clarify the issue.

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Notes:

1. The papers we read for this program:

• Hauge, E.H., and J.A. Stovneng, "Tunneling Times: A Critical Review" Reviews of Modern Physics 61, 917 (1989).
• Landsman, A.S., and U. Keller, "Attosecond Science and the Tunelling Time Problem" Physics Reports 547, 1 (2015). [ETH Zürich (free)]

2. The group responsible for the attoclock measurements at ETH-Zürich, including Landsman and Keller.

3. Please visit and comment on our subreddit, and if you can help us keep this going by contributing to our Patreon, we'd be grateful.

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