McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Theory HEP Seminar

Does a quantum particle know its own energy?

Rafael Sorkin

Perimeter Institute

If a wave function does not describe microscopic reality then what does? Reformulating quantum mechanics in path-integral terms leads to a notion of “precluded event” and hence to the proposal that quantal reality is fully described, for example, by a set of particle world lines. We can then ask which sets of electron trajectories correspond to a Hydrogen atom in its ground state and how they differ from those of an excited state. I will answer the analogous questions in a still simpler model that replaces the electron by a particle hopping (in discrete steps) on a circular lattice.

Wednesday, April 13th 2011, 12:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 326