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Quantum Reality
As probably the most successful scientific theory ever created, quantum theory has profoundly
changed our view of the world and extended the limits of our knowledge, impacting both the theo-
retical interpretation of a tremendous range of phenomena and the practical development of a host
of technological breakthroughs. Yet for all its success, quantum theory remains utterly baffling.
Quantum Reality: Theory and Philosophy, Second Edition cuts through much of the confu-
sion to provide readers with an exploration of quantum theory that is as authoritatively comprehen-
sive as it is intriguingly comprehensible. The book has been fully updated throughout to include the
latest results in quantum entanglement, the theory and practical applications of quantum computing,
quantum cosmology and quantum gravity. Needing little more than a school level physics and math-
ematics background, this volume requires only an interest in understanding how quantum theory
came to be and the myriad ways it both explains how our universe functions and extends the reach
of human knowledge.
Written by well-known physics author and teacher Dr. Jonathan Allday, this highly engaging
work:
• Presents a thorough grounding in the theoretical machinery of quantum physics

• Offers a whistle-stop tour through the early part of the 20th century when the founding
fathers of quantum theory forever altered the frontiers of human thought
• Provides an example-filled interpretation of the theory, its applications, and its pinnacle in
quantum field theory (QFT), so crucial in shaping ideas about the nature of reality
• Separates fact from speculation regarding quantum physics’ ability to provide a starting
point for philosophical queries into ultimate understanding and the limits of science
The world beneath the one that we experience with our senses is profoundly mysterious, and while
we may never completely unravel that mystery, quantum theory allows us to come closer than ever
to understanding where the science leaves off and the mystery begins. Quantum Reality: Theory
and Philosophy, Second Edition makes that understanding accessible to anyone possessing a quest
for knowledge and a sense of awe.
Quantum Reality
Theory and Philosophy
Second Edition
Jonathan Allday
Cover Image: Harris & Bush, MIT
Second edition published 2023

by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press

4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2023 Jonathan Allday
First edition published by CRC Press 2009
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author and publisher cannot
assume responsibility for the validity of all materials or the consequences of their use. The authors and publishers
have attempted to trace the copyright holders of all material reproduced in this publication and apologize to
copyright holders if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not been
acknowledged please write and let us know so we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or
utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written
permission from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www.copyright.com or contact the
Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are
not available on CCC please contact [email protected]
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for
identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Names: Allday, Jonathan, author.
Title: Quantum reality : theory and philosophy / Jonathan Allday.
Description: Second edition. | Abingdon, Oxon ; Boca Raton, FL : CRC
Press, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2022014186 | ISBN 9781032127347 (hbk) |
ISBN 9781032122380 (pbk) | ISBN 9781003225997 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Quantum theory. | Quantum theory—Philosophy.
Classification: LCC QC174.12 .A45 2022 | DDC 530.12—dc23/eng20220820
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022014186
ISBN: 978-1-032-12734-7 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-032-12238-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-22599-7 (ebk)
DOI: 10.1201/9781003225997
Typeset in Times
by codeMantra
To my parents
My point, which you’ll hear me rant about again, is that at both
the conceptual and the mathematical level, quantum mechanics
is not just a funny-looking reformulation of classical physics. The
two physical theories are fundamentally, physically different.
Michael A. Morrison
The average quantum mechanic is no more philosophical
than the average motor mechanic.
Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne KBE FRS
Of two alternative futures which we conceive, both may now be really possible;
and the one become impossible only at the very moment when the other excludes it
by becoming real itself. Indeterminism thus denies the world to be one unbending
unit of fact. It says there is a certain ultimate pluralism in it; and, so saying, it
corroborates our ordinary unsophisticated view of things. To that view, actualities
seem to float in a wider sea of possibilities from out of which they are chosen; and,
somewhere, indeterminism says, such possibilities exist, and form a part of truth.
William James
Physics may reveal the mind of God, but only if
he happens to be thinking about dirt.
Ken Wilber
Science… proceeds by elucidation, so that feats of genius
can become ordinary learning for beginners.
Roland Omnès
Pictogram Credit: Emrys

Contents
Forward...........................................................................................................................................xvii
Preface.............................................................................................................................................xix
About the Author.............................................................................................................................xxi
Introduction.......................................................................................................................................1
I.1 Physics................................................................................................................1
I.2 Philosophy.......................................................................................................... 2
Realists..................................................................................................3
Instrumentalists.....................................................................................3
PART 1
Chapter 1 Our First Encounter with the Quantum World: Light................................................... 7

1.1 Some Opening Thoughts.................................................................................... 7
1.2 A little Light Reading......................................................................................... 7
1.3 Lasers and Video Cameras................................................................................. 9
1.4 Photons............................................................................................................. 10
1.5 An Interference Experiment............................................................................. 11
1.5.1 Interference as a Wave Effect.............................................................. 12
1.5.2 Mach–Zehnder with Photons.............................................................. 16
1.5.3 Delayed Choice................................................................................... 18
1.6 Summary..........................................................................................................20
Notes��20
Chapter 2 Particles....................................................................................................................... 23
2.1 Particles and Waves.......................................................................................... 23
2.1.1 Electrons and Electron Guns............................................................... 23
2.2 The Stern-Gerlach Experiment........................................................................24
2.2.1 Turning Things Around...................................................................... 27
2.2.2 Things Get More Puzzling..................................................................28
2.2.3 So, Where Did It Go?.......................................................................... 29
2.2.4 What Does It All Mean?..................................................................... 31
2.3 Summary..........................................................................................................34
Notes�� 34
Chapter 3 Quantum States........................................................................................................... 35

3.1 Where Are We Now?........................................................................................ 35
3.2 Describing Classical Systems........................................................................... 35
3.2.1 Chaos................................................................................................... 37
3.3 Describing Quantum Systems.......................................................................... 38
3.3.1 Specific Example: Mach–Zehnder Again...........................................40
3.3.2 Probability Amplitudes.......................................................................44
vii
viii Contents
3.3.3 Relating Amplitudes to Probabilities..................................................44

3.3.4 Amplitudes, Complex Numbers and Phase......................................... 45
3.3.5 States in Stern–Gerlach Experiment................................................... 48
3.3.6 General Stern–Gerlach States............................................................. 49
3.3.7 Some Further Thoughts....................................................................... 50
3.4 What Are Quantum States?.............................................................................. 51
Notes��52
Chapter 4 Amplitudes.................................................................................................................. 55
4.1 More on Amplitudes......................................................................................... 55
4.1.1 Change of Basis................................................................................... 58
4.2 Dirac Notation.................................................................................................. 59
4.2.1 Orthonormal Bases..............................................................................60
4.2.2 New Light Through…......................................................................... 61
4.2.3 Going the Other Way.......................................................................... 63
Notes��63
Chapter 5 Measurement............................................................................................................... 65
5.1 Embracing Change........................................................................................... 65
5.2 Types of States.................................................................................................. 65
5.2.1 Eigenstates........................................................................................... 65
5.2.2 Mixed States........................................................................................66
5.3 Expectation Values...........................................................................................66
5.4 Operators.......................................................................................................... 67
5.4.1 Operators and Physical Quantities...................................................... 69
5.4.2 Classical and Quantum....................................................................... 69
5.5 How States Evolve............................................................................................ 70
5.5.1 Why Is State Collapse Necessary?...................................................... 73
5.5.2 Behind the Veil.................................................................................... 74
5.5.3 Determinism and Free Will................................................................ 74
Notes��75
Chapter 6 Interference................................................................................................................. 77
6.1 How Science Works?........................................................................................ 77
6.2 The Double-Slit Experiment............................................................................ 77
6.2.1 The Double Slit with Electrons........................................................... 79
6.2.2 Wave/Particle Duality......................................................................... 82
6.2.3 Wave Nature of Electrons.................................................................... 82
6.3 Double-Slit Amplitudes.................................................................................... 83
6.3.1 Phase and Physics................................................................................84
6.3.2 An Experiment with Phase.................................................................. 86
6.3.3 The Interference Term......................................................................... 87
6.3.4 Amplitudes and Electron Strikes........................................................ 87
6.4 Last Thoughts................................................................................................... 88
Notes��89
Chapter 7 Free Particles............................................................................................................... 91

7.1 The Position Basis............................................................................................ 91
7.2 The Amplitude for a Free Particle.................................................................... 91
Contents ix
7.2.1 Classical Waves...................................................................................92

7.2.2 The Complex Wave of the Amplitude.................................................94
7.2.3 Frequency............................................................................................ 95
7.2.4 What Does the Amplitude Tell Us about the Motion of
a Free Particle?....................................................................................96
7.2.5 Amplitudes, Energy, and Momentum.................................................97
7.3 Where Next?..................................................................................................... 98
Notes�� 98
Chapter 8 Identical Particles........................................................................................................99

8.1 Some Opening Thoughts..................................................................................99
8.2 Particle Dodgems.............................................................................................99
8.2.1 Scattering Amplitudes....................................................................... 101
8.2.2 The Moral of the Story...................................................................... 103
8.3 States of More Than One Particle.................................................................. 104
8.3.1 Identical Particles.............................................................................. 106
8.3.2 States in Real World.......................................................................... 109
8.3.3 Overall States.................................................................................... 111
8.3.4 More Than Two Particles.................................................................. 111
8.3.5 More General States.......................................................................... 112
8.3.6 A More Elegant Approach................................................................ 112
8.4 Final Thoughts................................................................................................ 113
Notes�� 113
Chapter 9 Scattering Identical Bosons....................................................................................... 115

9.1 Scattering........................................................................................................ 115
9.2 The Same, but Different: Identical Particles.................................................. 117
9.2.1 Using the Whole Detector................................................................. 118
9.2.2 And Another Way.............................................................................. 119
9.3 Transitions Away from States......................................................................... 120
9.3.1 Spontaneous vs Stimulated............................................................... 122
9.3.2 Lasers................................................................................................ 122
9.4 Bose–Einstein Condensates........................................................................... 123
9.4.1 Einstein’s Argument.......................................................................... 125
Notes�� 126
Chapter 10 Spin............................................................................................................................ 127

10.1 Fermions, Bosons, and Stern–Gerlach Magnets............................................ 127
10.2 Angular Momentum....................................................................................... 127
10.2.1 Angular Momentum in Quantum Theory......................................... 129
10.2.2 Eigenstates of Angular Momentum.................................................. 129
10.2.3 Magnetic Moments............................................................................ 131
10.2.4 The Magnetic Moment of an Electron.............................................. 132
10.2.5 Intrinsic Angular Momentum........................................................... 133
10.3 Spin Operators................................................................................................ 134
10.3.1 Spin Matrices.................................................................................... 135
10.3.2 Fermions and Bosons........................................................................ 139
10.4 Quantum Scale, Spin, Spinors and Twistors.................................................. 140
Notes�� 140
x Contents
Chapter 11 Fermion States........................................................................................................... 143

11.1 States, Normalization, and Phase................................................................... 143
11.2 Exchange and Rotation................................................................................... 144
11.3 Rotational Symmetry of States....................................................................... 145
11.3.1 Reversing the Polarity of the Neutron Flow...................................... 146
11.3.2 Coffee Mugs and Quantum States.................................................... 149
11.3.3 Spin, Symmetry, and Exchanges....................................................... 150
11.4 Time................................................................................................................ 151
11.4.1 Spinning Things Round.................................................................... 153
11.4.2 Rotation for More Fun and Profit...................................................... 155
11.4.3 So Spin Is?......................................................................................... 156
11.5 Boson Spin States........................................................................................... 157
11.5.1 More on Time Reversal..................................................................... 158
11.5.2 Time-Reversed Boson States............................................................. 159
11.6 Deep Waters................................................................................................... 160
Notes�� 160
Chapter 12 Continuous Bases...................................................................................................... 163

12.1 Representations............................................................................................... 163
12.2 Two Issues....................................................................................................... 165
12.2.1 Probability Density............................................................................ 165
12.2.2 Infinite State Expansions................................................................... 167
12.2.3 The Identity Operator........................................................................ 168
12.2.4 A Short Aside: Projection Operators................................................. 169
12.3 State Functions and Wave Functions.............................................................. 171
12.4 Observables.................................................................................................... 172
12.4.1 The Problem of Momentum.............................................................. 172
12.4.2 Momentum in Quantum Theory....................................................... 173
12.4.3 Operators and Representations.......................................................... 176
12.4.4 Expectation Values Again................................................................. 177
12.4.5 Operators and Variables.................................................................... 178
Notes�� 179
Chapter 13 Uncertainty................................................................................................................ 181

13.1 Expectation Is Not Enough............................................................................. 181
13.1.1 Developing Uncertainty.................................................................... 183
13.2 Heisenberg’s Principle.................................................................................... 186
13.2.1 So What?........................................................................................... 186
13.2.2 I’m Not Sure What You Mean by Uncertainty….............................. 187
13.3 Yet More Uncertainty..................................................................................... 188
13.3.1 The Generalized Uncertainty Principle............................................ 189
Notes�� 190
Chapter 14 The Equations of Quantum Theory.......................................................................... 191

14.1 The Schrödinger Equations............................................................................ 191
14.1.1 Ê and Ĥ.............................................................................................. 193
14.1.2 Stationary States................................................................................ 193
Contents xi
14.2 Ehrenfest’s Theorem....................................................................................... 194

14.2.1 The Classical Limit........................................................................... 196
14.2.2 Constants of Motion.......................................................................... 197
14.3 The Energy-Time Inequality.......................................................................... 197
14.3.1 I Really Don’t Have the Time…........................................................200
14.3.2 Energy/Time Uncertainty.................................................................. 201
14.4 Time Evolution............................................................................................... 201
14.5 Conclusions.....................................................................................................202
Notes��203
Chapter 15 Constrained Particles................................................................................................205

15.1 A Particle in a Box......................................................................................... 205
15.1.1 Another Brick in the Wall.................................................................206
15.1.2 Normalization....................................................................................208
15.1.3 Energy within the Box......................................................................209
15.1.4 Momentum in the Box....................................................................... 210
15.1.5 Spatial Distribution........................................................................... 211
15.1.6 Wave Packets..................................................................................... 212
15.1.7 Two-Dimensional and Three-Dimensional Boxes............................ 216
15.2 The Hydrogen Atom....................................................................................... 216
15.2.1 Quantum Numbers for Hydrogen...................................................... 220
15.2.2 Visualising Hydrogen State Functions.............................................. 221
15.3 A Box Containing More Than One Electron.................................................224
15.3.1 Temperature and the Fermi Gas........................................................ 225
15.3.2 White Dwarf Stars............................................................................ 226
Notes��229
PART 2
Chapter 16 Genealogy................................................................................................................. 233

16.1 The Scientific Community............................................................................. 233
16.2 “It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times”................................. 234
Notes�� 235
Chapter 17 Planck and Einstein................................................................................................... 237

17.1 Where to Start?............................................................................................... 237
17.2 Planck’s Life................................................................................................... 237
17.3 Planck Enters Research.................................................................................. 237
17.3.1 Planck’s Formula for Black Body Spectra........................................ 239
17.4 Einstein...........................................................................................................240
17.4.1 Quantization of Light........................................................................ 241
17.4.2 The Photoelectric Effect.................................................................... 242
17.4.3 Enter the Photon................................................................................ 242
17.4.4 Bosons............................................................................................... 243
17.5 Final Thoughts................................................................................................ 243
Notes�� 244
xii Contents
Chapter 18 Bohr........................................................................................................................... 247

18.1 The Godfather................................................................................................ 247
18.2 Early Life........................................................................................................ 247
18.3 Atomic Theory...............................................................................................248
18.3.1 Atomic Spectra..................................................................................248
18.3.2 Bohr’s Atom...................................................................................... 249
18.3.3 Developments.................................................................................... 252
18.4 Complementarity............................................................................................ 255
18.4.1 Extensions......................................................................................... 256
18.5 Later Life........................................................................................................ 257
Notes�� 258
Chapter 19 Heisenberg................................................................................................................. 259

19.1 Early Days...................................................................................................... 259
19.2 The Development of Quantum Theory.......................................................... 259
19.2.1 Cloud Chamber Tracks...................................................................... 261
19.2.2 The Uncertainty Principle................................................................. 261
19.2.3 Quantum Concepts............................................................................ 263
19.3 Later Life........................................................................................................264
Notes�� 265
Chapter 20 De Broglie & Schrödinger........................................................................................ 267

20.1 Beginnings...................................................................................................... 267
20.1.1 Electron Diffraction.......................................................................... 268
20.2 Enter the Wave Equation................................................................................ 269
20.2.1 Matter Waves..................................................................................... 270
20.2.2 So What Is ψ?.................................................................................... 271
20.2.3 Nobel Prizes...................................................................................... 272
20.3 Schrödinger’s Philosophy............................................................................... 272
Notes�� 273
Chapter 21 Dirac.......................................................................................................................... 275

21.1 Dirac’s Influence on Quantum Physics........................................................... 275
21.2 Dirac, the Person............................................................................................ 277
21.3 Dirac’s Views on the Meaning of Quantum Theory...................................... 278
Notes�� 281
Chapter 22 Conclusions............................................................................................................... 283

Notes�� 284
PART 3
Chapter 23 Quantum Correlations............................................................................................... 287

23.1 Two Threads................................................................................................... 287
23.2 Is Quantum Theory Complete?...................................................................... 287
Contents xiii
23.2.1 The EPR Argument........................................................................... 288

23.2.2 Follow-Up by David Bohm............................................................... 291
23.2.3 Bohr’s Reply to the EPR Argument.................................................. 293
23.2.4 Einstein and Bohr.............................................................................. 294
23.3 Schrödinger Introduces Entanglement........................................................... 295
23.3.1 Entanglement and Measurement....................................................... 295
23.3.2 The Sorry Tail of Schrödinger’s Cat................................................. 297
23.4 John Bell and Bohm’s EPR............................................................................. 299
23.4.1 Bell’s Argument................................................................................300
23.4.2 A Toy Model...................................................................................... 301
23.4.3 Bell’s Formula...................................................................................302
Experimental Correlations, Se..............................................302
Local Hidden Variable Correlations, Sh............................... 303
Quantum Mechanical Correlations, Sq................................. 305
23.4.4 Aspect’s Experiment.........................................................................306
23.5 Implications....................................................................................................308
Notes�� 308
Chapter 24 Quantum Computing................................................................................................. 311

24.1 Historical Perspective..................................................................................... 311
24.2 The Fundamentals of Digital Computing....................................................... 311
24.2.1 A Bit More Information.................................................................... 312
24.2.2 Logic Gates....................................................................................... 312
24.3 Quantum Analogues....................................................................................... 313
24.3.1 Qubits................................................................................................ 313
24.3.2 Quantum Gates.................................................................................. 315
24.3.3 The No-Cloning Theorem................................................................. 317
24.3.4 What Makes a Quantum Computer Quantum?................................. 318
24.4 Quantum Teleportation................................................................................... 319
24.4.1 Experimental Implementation........................................................... 322
24.5 Practical Quantum Computers....................................................................... 322
Notes��323
Chapter 25 Density Operators...................................................................................................... 325

25.1 Great Expectations......................................................................................... 325
25.2 Why Bother?................................................................................................... 327
25.3 The Density Operator and EPR/Bohm-Type Experiments............................ 329
25.3.1 Representing a State.......................................................................... 330
25.3.2 The Density Operator and Entangled States..................................... 331
25.4 The Density Matrix and the Measurement Problem...................................... 332
Notes�� 334
Chapter 26 Interpretations........................................................................................................... 335

26.1 What is An Interpretation?............................................................................. 335
26.2 A Collection of Problems............................................................................... 336
26.2.1 The Nature of Probability................................................................. 336
26.2.2 Reduction of the State Vector............................................................340
26.2.3 Entanglement..................................................................................... 342
xiv Contents
26.2.4 Measurement..................................................................................... 343

26.3 Important Theorems....................................................................................... 343
26.3.1 Bell’s Inequality................................................................................ 343
26.3.2 The Kochen-Specker Theorem.........................................................344
26.3.3 Proving the Kochen-Specker Theorem.............................................344
Opening Moves....................................................................344
Development........................................................................346
Endgame�� 348
26.3.4 Consequences.................................................................................... 352
26.4 Carnegie Hall................................................................................................. 352
Notes�� 352
Chapter 27 The Copenhagen Interpretation................................................................................ 353

27.1 Bohr’s Influence.............................................................................................. 353
27.2 Bohr’s View of Quantum Theory................................................................... 354
27.2.1 Classical Concepts Must Be Used to Describe the Results
of Any Experiment............................................................................ 354
27.2.2 During a Measurement It Is Impossible to Separate a
Quantum Object from the Apparatus................................................ 355
27.2.3 The Results of One Experimental Arrangement Cannot
Necessarily Be Related to Another................................................... 358
27.2.4 Classical Explanations....................................................................... 359
27.2.5 Drawing the Threads Together..........................................................360
27.3 Heisenberg and Potentia................................................................................. 361
27.4 Von Neumann and Measurement................................................................... 363
27.4.1 The Mind of an Observer..................................................................364
27.5 The Deep End…............................................................................................. 365
27.6 Criticisms of the Copenhagen View............................................................... 367
27.6.1 The Problem of the Cut..................................................................... 367
27.6.2 Problem of Collapse.......................................................................... 370
Notes�� 370
Chapter 28 The Many Worlds Interpretation............................................................................... 373

28.1 Everett, Wheeler, Bohr & DeWitt.................................................................. 373
28.2 The Relative State Formulation...................................................................... 374
28.3 Measurement Records.................................................................................... 376
28.3.1 And the Next One….......................................................................... 378
28.4 The Ontological Step...................................................................................... 379
28.5 Many Worlds Arrives..................................................................................... 380
28.6 Many Worlds Matures.................................................................................... 381
28.6.1 The Nature of Probability................................................................. 381
Everett’s Solution................................................................. 382
Other Approaches................................................................ 383
Decision Theory Enters the Argument................................ 383
28.6.2 State Reduction................................................................................. 387
28.6.3 Entanglement..................................................................................... 387
28.6.4 Measurement..................................................................................... 387
28.6.5 Bell’s Inequality and the K-S Theorem............................................. 387
Contents xv
28.7 Criticisms of the Many Worlds View............................................................. 388

28.8 Time Thoughts............................................................................................... 390
Notes��390
Chapter 29 Assorted Alternatives................................................................................................ 393

29.1 Being in Two Minds about Something…....................................................... 393
29.1.1 Mindless Hulks….............................................................................. 394
29.1.2 The Advantages of Having More Than One Mind........................... 395
29.2 Objective Collapse.......................................................................................... 396
29.2.1 The Penrose Interpretation................................................................ 396
Notes��399
Chapter 30 Consistent Histories................................................................................................... 401

30.1 Frameworks.................................................................................................... 401
30.2 Quantum Reasoning.......................................................................................405
30.2.1 Moggies and Sample Spaces.............................................................405
30.2.2 Meaningless Statements....................................................................405
30.2.3 Contextuality.....................................................................................407
30.2.4 Non-Locality.....................................................................................407
30.3 Histories..........................................................................................................407
30.3.1 Combining Histories.........................................................................408
30.3.2 Probabilities.......................................................................................409
30.3.3 Consistent Histories........................................................................... 411
30.3.4 Histories and Mach-Zehnder............................................................. 412
30.3.5 Measurement..................................................................................... 415
30.3.6 Decoherence and the Classical World............................................... 417
30.3.7 Histories in Cosmology..................................................................... 419
30.4 Ontology......................................................................................................... 420
30.4.1 Pre-Probabilities................................................................................ 421
30.4.2 Unicity............................................................................................... 421
30.4.3 Probability (Again…)........................................................................ 422
30.4.4 Other Issues....................................................................................... 422
Notes��423
Chapter 31 The Ontological Interpretation.................................................................................. 425

31.1 Physics and Philosophy.................................................................................. 425
31.2 Wave and Particle........................................................................................... 426
31.2.1 Bohm’s Version of the Schrödinger Equation................................... 426
31.2.2 The Quantum Potential Energy......................................................... 429
31.3 Probability...................................................................................................... 432
31.4 Quantum Potential Energy in Action............................................................. 433
31.4.1 Quantum Potential Energy and the Double Slit Experiment............ 433
31.4.2 Quantum Potential Energy and the Particle in a Box....................... 434
31.4.3 Spin.................................................................................................... 435
31.4.4 Entanglement..................................................................................... 436
31.5 Information and Wave Function Collapse...................................................... 436
31.6 Deeper Waters................................................................................................ 439
31.7 Reactions to Bohm’s Theory..........................................................................440
Notes��441
xvi Contents
Chapter 32 Quantum Field Theory.............................................................................................. 443

32.1 Why Are We Doing This?.............................................................................. 443
32.2 Taking Identical Particles Seriously............................................................... 443
32.2.1 Particle Labels...................................................................................444
32.2.2 Substance Abuse............................................................................... 445
32.3 States in Quantum Field Theory.................................................................... 445
32.3.1 Fock States........................................................................................446
32.3.2 The Vacuum...................................................................................... 447
32.3.3 Up and Down We Go….................................................................... 447
32.3.4 Change of Basis................................................................................. 447
32.3.5 Orderly Matters.................................................................................448
32.3.6 Fermions and Bosons........................................................................449
32.3.7 The Number Is Up............................................................................. 450
32.3.8 Normalization.................................................................................... 451
32.3.9 Round and Round We Go….............................................................. 452
32.3.10 Multiparticle Operators Representing Observables.......................... 453
32.4 Basis for Progress........................................................................................... 454
32.4.1 So Why Is It Called Quantum Field Theory?................................... 455
32.4.2 Wave-Particle Duality....................................................................... 457
32.5 Interactions in Quantum Field Theory........................................................... 458
32.5.1 Interaction Operators......................................................................... 459
32.5.2 Interaction Potentials......................................................................... 461
32.6 Vacuum Fluctuations...................................................................................... 463
32.6.1 Fields and Numbers...........................................................................464
32.7 Quantum Gravity............................................................................................465
32.7.1 Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG).........................................................466
32.7.2 String Theory....................................................................................466
32.7.3 Prospects...........................................................................................466
Notes��467
Chapter 33 Personal Conclusions.................................................................................................469

33.1 Popular Opinion.............................................................................................469
33.2 Quantum Reality............................................................................................469
33.2.1 Critical Realism................................................................................. 470
33.2.2 Copenhagenism & Consistent Histories............................................ 471
33.2.3 Many Worlds and Many Minds......................................................... 472
33.2.4 The Ontological Interpretation.......................................................... 473
33.2.5 Objective Collapse............................................................................. 473
33.3 Conclusions..................................................................................................... 473
Notes��474
Appendix List of Important Rules.............................................................................................. 475
Index............................................................................................................................................... 477
Forward
Quantum mechanics is “at first glance and at least in part, a mathematical machine for predicting
the behaviors of microscopic particles — or, at least, of the measuring instruments we use to explore
those behaviors [Ismael, 2020].” Why does the machine work? This is the question of how to ‘inter-
pret’ quantum mechanics. It turns out to be intensely controversial. Carroll recalls,
At a workshop attended by expert researchers in quantum mechanics… Max Tegmark took an...unsci-
entific poll of the participants’ favored interpretation ….The Copenhagen interpretation came in first
with thirteen votes, while the many-worlds interpretation came in second with eight. Another nine
votes were scattered among other alternatives. Most interesting, eighteen votes were cast for “none of
the above/undecided.” And these are the experts [2010b, 402, n. 199].
There are two reasons why this is not really disagreement over the interpretation of quantum
mechanics, in any ordinary sense of ‘interpretation’. First, at stake is not what people happen to
mean by technical terms, like ‘state vector’, ‘collapse’, and so on. This would be a question of (pre-
sumably empirical) natural language semantics, and would tell us nothing about the physical world.
Second, the ‘interpretations’ do not even all agree on the machine. For example, Bohmian mechan-
ics (Chapter 31) amends the equations, and makes subtly different predictions.
Physics has made impressive progress without addressing the interpretational question. But
there is a growing sense that progress on the deepest mysteries, like how to reconcile quantum
theory and General Relativity, may require its resolution [Hossenfelder & Palmer, 2020]. Philosophy
is becoming harder to avoid. The situation resembles the one in the early 20th century, when philo-
sophical reflection inspired some of the most penetrating arguments in the history of physics, such
as the EPR argument and the SchrÖdinger Cat thought experiment.
This book is unique in the physics landscape. It is not a textbook, a guide to solving the
SchrÖdinger equation. It is also not a philosophy text, assuming familiarity with metaphysics and
epistemology. It is a serious survey for non-specialists of what the mathematics could mean. It
offers, all in one place, an accessible introduction to the theory (up through a sketch of quantum
field theory), an overview of the ‘no-go’ results, and a careful discussion of some important interpre-
tations. Philosophers will appreciate the self-contained introduction to the theory, while physicists
will learn from the philosophical analysis. Newcomers will delight in all of it.
We need more books like this. Understanding the nature of value, consciousness, mathematical
truth, and possibility and necessity, will also require insights from both philosophy and science.
Deep interaction between philosophy and mathematics has already born plentiful fruits outside of
philosophy proper, like proof theory, model theory, and theoretical computer science. We may hope
that a meaningful exchange between philosophy and physics will be comparably fecund.
Justin Clarke-Doane
Columbia University
IAS, Princeton
xvii
Preface
The world is not what it seems. Behind the apparent solidity of everyday objects lies a seething
shadow world of potentiality which defies easy description, as it is so different from our everyday
experience. In some manner, familiar objects such as solid tables, cricket balls, stars, and galaxies
arise from what transpires underneath. We do not know precisely how this comes about.
There is a theory that describes the underlying world: quantum theory. It is one of the most suc-
cessful scientific theories of all time and it has profoundly changed our view of the world.
Quantum understanding is vital to our current science and technology; its application is not
restricted to esoteric experiments in high-energy physics. The theory certainly helps us under-
stand the inner mechanisms of neutron stars, superconducting materials, and possibly even the
early moments of the Big Bang, but without it we would have no appreciation of why the table on
which this laptop sits is solid. The LED bulb on the table next to me is generating light (which is a
quantum phenomenon) as electrical charge in the form of tiny particles called electrons (which we
need quantum theory to understand) are passing through a material and transferring energy. The
material in the wires leading to the bulb has a property called resistance, which can only be fully
understood by applying quantum laws.
Yet for all its success, aspects of quantum theory remain utterly baffling. While the mathematics
is clear (albeit occasionally hard to deal with), interpreting what it is saying about the world remains
a profound challenge.
In the 100-odd years since quantum theory was born, there have been many books written that
attempt to explain quantum physics to the interested amateur. This is an important endeavor. The
world beneath the one that we experience with our senses is profoundly mysterious, and there are
some important philosophical messages about the nature of reality and the limits of science that
need to be put across. I hope that this book can contribute to that effort.
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING (FIRST EDITION)

The Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and especially Dr. Jimmy
Altham for access to the college library and the time and space to work during the summer of 2002
while I was writing the first edition.
Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne KBE FRS (1930–2021) for an inspiring lunchtime discussion and
his encouraging support.
Dr. Lewis Ryder (1941–2018) for reading parts of the manuscript.
Dr. David Wallace for reading the section on the Many Worlds interpretation.
Dr. Grahem Farmello for reading the section on Dirac.
Greg Manson, Md, for help with uncertainty.
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING (SECOND EDITION)

Many thanks to Mrs Rebecca Hodges-Davies, Dr Kirsten Barr and latterly Dr Danny Kielty all of
CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group for guiding me and this manuscript through the production
process. Also the team at codemantra.
Special thanks to Scott Hayek, Bruce Newhall, John Sweeney, Neal Brower (all of the Johns
Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, retired) and John R. Moore (retired) who reached
out to me with regard to General Relativity and then (undaunted) ventured into quantum reality.
They read and commented on sections of the revision with sympathy and in detail. Somehow, they
managed to embody my ideal reader and still be willing to talk to me. I’m looking forward to some-
time meeting you guys in person!
xix
xx Preface
I am grateful to Dr Philip Davies of Bournemouth University for also contacting me, offering the
very flattering, and daunting, prospect of being interviewed on YouTube and then managing to edit
me into sounding reasonably coherent. His willingness to then read and comment on some of this
second edition was a welcome bonus.
Many thanks to my school friend Professor Simon Hands, University of Liverpool, who read
many of these chapters and challenged various bits of wonky physics. Of course, any mistakes
remain my responsibility. Here’s to the classes of 79/80.
None of this could be done without the continual support of my family and friends. Carolyn has
had to carry a lot over the last 18 months never mind the additional burden of a whiney author. My
love and thanks to her. Unfortunately, I have already started again…
And finally, many thanks to Emrys who has shown me that the world is exactly as strange as I
suspected it to be.
Jonathan Allday
2nd Edition
16th January 2020, Yorkshire
13th February 2022, Worcestershire
[email protected]
About the Author
For 30 years, Dr. Jonathan Allday taught physics at a range of schools in the UK. After taking his
first degree in Natural Sciences at Cambridge, he moved to Liverpool University where he gained
a PhD in particle physics in 1989. While carrying out his research, Dr. Allday joined a group of
academics and teachers working on an optional syllabus to be incorporated into A-level physics.
This new option was designed to bring students up to date with advances in particle physics and
cosmology. An examining board accepted the syllabus in 1993, and now similar components appear
on many advanced courses.
Shortly after this, Dr. Allday started work on Quarks Leptons and the Big Bang, now published
by Taylor & Francis and available in its third edition, which was intended as a rigorous but acces-
sible introduction to these topics. Since then, he has also written Apollo in Perspective, Quantum
Reality and Space-time, co-authored a successful textbook, and contributed to an encyclopedia for
young scientists.
Dr. Allday’s interest in the physics and philosophy of the quantum world dates back to his school
days, where he remembers reading an autobiography of Einstein. As an undergraduate, he special-
ized in relativistic quantum mechanics and field theory, writing his third-year project on Bell’s
inequality, as well as taking a minor course in the history and philosophy of science. The idea
for this book occurred during a summer placement at Cambridge, hosted by Gonville and Caius
College.
Other than physics, Dr. Allday has a keen interest in cricket and Formula 1.
xxi
Introduction
Suppose for example that quantum mechanics were found to resist precise formulation.
Suppose that when formulation beyond FAPP [for all practical purposes] is attempted, we
find an unmovable finger pointing outside the subject, to the mind of the observer, to the
Hindu scriptures, to God, or even only Gravitation? Would that not be very, very interesting?
J S Bell1
[my addition]
I.1
PHYSICS
Quantum theory has passed through three distinct stages during its evolution. The first is generally
referred to as ‘old quantum theory’. During a period roughly between 1900 and 1925 Planck, Bohr
and Einstein, among others, grappled with various experimental and theoretical crises by patching
up classical (Newtonian) mechanics with some new quantum ideas applied as band-aids. This is not
to disparage the work; it was vitally important, and you can only do what is possible at the time.
Gradually, however, Heisenberg, Jordan, Schrödinger, Born, Bose, de Broglie and Dirac developed
a coherent structure that would be recognized as quantum theory as it exists now. This broadly took
place in the mid-1920, but progress did not stop there. Born, Heisenberg, Jordan, Dirac and Pauli
pieced together quantum field theory between 1926 and 1929. Other physicists, such as Fermi and
Fock later added refinements to the basic structure. In some ways, this evolution can be seen as a
progressive acceptance of quantum concepts that were increasingly distant from classical thinking.
This book is divided into three parts to somewhat mirror this evolution. Part 1 covers the basic
conceptual and mathematical machinery of mid-1920s quantum theory. In Part 2 we take a whistle-
stop tour through old quantum theory and the development of its successor by focussing on the work
and views of some of the central figures involved2. Finally, in Part 3 we survey some important
interpretations and tackle an outline of quantum field theory. At various points, we will draw atten-
tion to the key interpretive issues and discuss what is at stake in our view of reality.
The quantum world is very different to the picture painted by classical physics. That being the
case and given the extreme nature of some of these differences, we might question the wisdom of
accepting the quantum view. The answer is that quantum theory is unsurpassed in its record of
explaining different aspects of nature, some of which we will touch upon later. A few significant
areas include:
• The otherwise mysterious aspects of radioactivity which found a natural explanation within
quantum theory.
• The quantum theory of electrons in atoms allowed us to understand and categorize the
spectral lines of atoms and molecules.
• As a parallel development, chemistry, the nature of the chemical bond, the periodic table
and the structure of molecules all gained a secure theoretical basis.
• Applying quantum theory to matter allowed an understanding of some anomalous aspects
of heat capacities, the conductive (thermal and electrical) properties of materials, and
the development of the band theory of solids. Without this key theoretical advance, vital
aspects of modern technology, including the development of semi-conductors, would not
have been possible.
• Equally, the magnetic properties of materials are a quantum issue. This aspect of theory
has led to the development of important magnetic technologies, such as MRI imaging.
DOI: 10.1201/9781003225997-1 1
2 Quantum Reality
• Quantum theory has also proven to be flexible enough to tackle some surprising discover-
ies, such as superconductivity, the nature of stellar interiors, nuclear fission and fusion and
aspects of Big Bang theory.
Given this stellar record from a broad range of different aspects of physical theory, we are bound to
take the concepts of quantum theory seriously despite their counter-intuitive aspects.
I.2
PHILOSOPHY
Scientists are very ambitious. They’re very competitive. If they really thought philosophy would help
them, they’d learn it and use it. They don’t.
L. Wolpert3
Now I need to say something about philosophy. Don’t put the book down, it will all be over in a
minute.
Scientists can be quite disparaging about philosophy, sometimes while in the process of espous-
ing, quite stridently, a philosophical position of their own. The fact is all scientific theories point
beyond themselves to some degree. At the very least, they open up questions such as: ‘what does this
theory tell us about reality?’, ‘what aspects of this theory, if any, directly relate to real elements of
the universe?’, ‘how do we know that any scientific theory is true, and what does truth mean in this
context?’, ‘how does science work as a reliable tool for scrutinizing the world?’. Such issues cannot
be fully addressed from within science.
Scientific advances come from the joint application of experiment and theory. While it is difficult
to maintain that these are separate disciplines, when you analyse the situation in detail, the world is
too strange and surprising to be understood in all its aspects purely by philosophical reflection. Who
would have thought that quantum theory was likely? We need the constant nudge and corrective of
experiment to direct the focus of theory.
However, not all the important questions about the world are directly addressable by science.
Nor is it sufficient to simply define important questions as being those that are open to scientific
techniques, not least because that is in itself a philosophical position. An argument along the lines
of ‘our subject makes progress and yours doesn’t, so sucks boo to your subject’ is hardly a mature
analysis. Perhaps the apparent lack of progress in philosophy is not a reflection of any lack of rigour,
but more to do with the difficulty of the problems it seeks to address.
Take the example of quantum theory. The mathematical structure of the theory has been in place
for over 100 years, albeit subject to the occasional and useful refinement in that time4. However,
the interpretation of the theory is still an open question. The fact that there are several competing
views is a signal point. Establishing the correct interpretation is not itself a scientific matter. If
each approach agrees on the physical content, they have the same predictive power hence they are
experimentally indiscernible5. Nevertheless, they project radically different outlooks on the nature
of reality (contrast the Many Worlds interpretation with Many Minds, just for one example). The
choice that each individual makes is made, consciously, or not, on its consonance with their overall
worldview. Philosophy naturally enters the discussion, even if tacitly.
Philosophers have a variety of views on the nature of knowledge. At issue are matters relating
to how we know something, how reliable our knowledge is, whether all our knowledge comes from
the world via our senses or are there some things that we just ‘know’ etc. Discussions of this kind
are covered by a branch of philosophy called epistemology. A closely connected, but distinct, area
is ontology. This is the inquiry into what is actually out there for us to know. As a rough example,
the existence of electrons is a matter for ontology; how we know about them and their properties
falls to epistemology.
Introduction 3
Epistemologically there are two approaches to how science works, or rather what it is that science
sets out to do.
If you are a realist, then you believe that science is an accurate map of what is really out there.
The various ideas and pictures that we come up with (such as electrons, black holes, the Big Bang,
and DNA) are elements of reality and we are discovering true information about the world. From
this perspective, the purpose of science is clear: to find out as much as possible about what is going
on in the world. To a realist, a good theory is one that convinces us that the things it speaks about
are not just figments of our scientific imaginations.
However, you might be an instrumentalist, in which case you are not too bothered about the
accuracy or reality of your ideas, as long as they fit the data and allow us to make accurate pre-
dictions. An instrumentalist may not believe that electrons are real. They will agree that various
experiments produce clumps of data that can be gathered under the heading “that’s an electron” and
will use this data to predict another set of experimental readings under slightly different circum-
stances. However, they will draw short of committing to the objective existence of electrons. You do
not have to believe that Colonel Mustard is a real person to have fun finding out if he is a murderer
in the game Cluedo. To an instrumentalist, a good theory is one that allows us to play the game well.
Various scientists have embraced and promoted one approach or another over the years:
Realists
Physicists believe that there exist real material things independent of our minds and our theories. We
construct theories and invent words (such as electron, positron etc.) in an attempt to explain to ourselves
what we know about our external world … we expect a satisfactory theory, as a good image of objective
reality, to contain a counterpoint for every element of the physical world.
B. Podolsky
A complete, consistent, unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the
events around us, and of our own existence.
S. Hawking
The great wonder in the progress of science is that it has revealed to us a certain agreement between
our thoughts and things …
L. de Broglie
Instrumentalists
I don’t demand that a theory correspond to reality because I don’t know what it is. Reality is not a qual-
ity you can test with litmus paper. All I’m concerned with is that the theory should predict the results
of measurements
S. Hawking
In science we study the linkage of pointer readings with pointer readings.

A. Eddington
There are arguments on both sides. A realist would say that the only satisfactory way of explaining
the success of science is by believing that are talking about reality. An instrumentalist would coun-
ter by saying that in Newton’s age we believed that time was the same for everyone, then Einstein
comes along and declares that time is different depending on our state of motion, or if we happen
4 Quantum Reality
to be in a gravity field. What next? Often our ideas of what is ‘out there’ change radically, so why
believe any of it? If our ideas let us fly to the moon, cure diseases, and make good plastics, who
cares?
Many scientists6 go about earning their daily bread without being bothered about the philosophi-
cal niceties; “shut up and calculate” would be their motto. Unfortunately, tackling quantum physics
raises questions that are difficult to put aside. It is all to do with the state of a quantum system. A
realist has some trouble believing that a quantum state is an ontologically real thing, as it seems,
at least in part, to depend on our knowledge about a system. An instrumentalist would have no
problem believing that states are nothing more than a concise expression of our information about a
system. More of a challenge would be explaining why the objects that we study behave in radically
different ways if their state changes, which suggests that they have some ontological relevance.
Throughout this book, I am going to try and remain as neutral as possible and point out where
realism and instrumentalism have their strengths when applied to quantum theory. You may find
that exposure to these ideas forces you to refine your own thinking.
NOTES
1 J. S. Bell, Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge University Press; 2nd edi-
tion, 2004.
2 As I am not aware of a collective noun for these individuals, I have coined the term Founding Fathers
to use in this book. I am amused by the whimsical implied connection to the framers. The unfortunate
gender specificity in this phrase is a matter of historical fact. Mme Curie, for example, did very impor-
tant work that should not be ignored, but it is not directly related to our story.
3 L. Wolpert (1929–2021), University College London, Round Table Debate: Science versus Philosophy?
https://philosophynow.org/issues/27/Round_Table_Debate_Science_versus_Philosophy.
4 When we get to the chapter on Consistent Histories, we will see something of that nature.
5 Objective collapse is a clear exception to this. As we will see later, this entails some modification to the
theory as it stands and hence has different predictions which are, just about, accessible by experiment.
However, objective collapse addresses one, critically important, aspect of interpretation, but not the
whole philosophical ballpark.
6 Perhaps the majority.
Part 1
1 Our First Encounter with
the Quantum World
Light
1.1 SOME OPENING THOUGHTS
The first draft of this chapter was written while sitting in a college garden under a cloudless sky,
with the bright sunlight flooding over some particularly well-manicured lawns (Figure 1.1).1 I clearly
remember struggling to see what I was typing over the reflected glare from my laptop screen.
I still find it hard to reconcile the beauty of such scenes with what I know about the nature of
light. This is part of the mystery that shrouds quantum reality.
Large-scale (macroscopic) objects, such as trees, bushes, and cricket balls, are made up of
small-scale (microscopic) things such as protons, neutrons, and electrons. The laws of physics that
describe the large-scale world have been broadly understood since the 1700s. Our first tentative
exploration of the physics of the small-scale started in the 1900s. As we rapidly came to realize, the
laws governing the small-scale world describe behaviour that, judged by the standards of everyday
experience, is utterly bizarre. It is very difficult to see how all the funny business going on at the
atomic scale can underpin the regular, reliable world we spend our lives in.
This contrast between the microscopic world (‘seen’ via experiment) and the macroscopic world
(experienced via our senses) is a theme that will recur throughout this book.
1.2 A LITTLE LIGHT READING

When you set out to understand some new phenomenon, it’s a good idea to start by looking for
similarities with something that you have already figured out. In the case of light, there appears to
be two possible comparisons. Light might be a wave (a spread out, rather flappy thing that varies in
both space and time, like the ripples on a pond) or a stream of particles (localized hard lumps, like
cricket balls, that simply change their position with time). Up until the 1800s, there was no experi-
mental way of settling the issue, so most people took sides on philosophical or theoretical grounds.
Two big-name physicists squared up in opposite corners: Thomas Young favoured a wave view of
light with Isaac Newton (see Figure 1.2) championing a particle interpretation.
In 1665 Newton made some fundamental discoveries about light while taking leave from his stud-
ies at Cambridge, which was under threat from the plague. In one of his classic experiments, he
allowed a thin shaft of sunlight to fall on a glass prism, producing a spectrum of colours. Newton
explained this by assuming that the colours of light corresponded to distinct types of particle.
In this view, white light was a stream of all the different particles mixed together, rather than a
distinct colour of itself. As they passed through the prism, the various types of particle interacted
with the glass differently, which caused them to emerge along separate paths, separating to give
the observed spectrum.
With Newton as a public supporter, 2 the particle view was bound to hold a certain sway, but the
existence of sharp shadows near opaque objects did not hurt the argument.
To the casual glance, shadows have well-defined edges. This is tricky to explain if light is a type
of wave. Other examples, such as water waves, clearly bend around objects that get in their way. So,
if light is a wave, shadows should have rather fuzzy outlines, or so it was thought in Newton’s time.
DOI: 10.1201/9781003225997-3 7
8 Quantum Reality
FIGURE 1.1 The opening of this chapter was written while sitting outside one of the windows of Harvey
Court, part of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridge.
FIGURE 1.2 An engraving of Isaac Newton (1642–1727)—his pioneering experiments with light led him to
propose that light was composed of a stream of particles.
However, not all were convinced, and in 1801, Young carried out an experiment that was sensi-
tive enough to reveal the wave aspects of light. The key to Young’s discovery was the use of two
linked sources of light to produce an interference pattern. We will go into the details of how inter-
ference works in Section 1.5.1, but for a simple illustration imagine dropping two pebbles into an
otherwise smooth surface of water. Ripples spread out from each impact point and inevitably over-
lap somewhere. The result is a complex pattern of motion on the surface of water: an interference
Our First Encounter with the Quantum World: Light 9
FIGURE 1.3 Thomas Young’s original diagram explaining his interference experiment. A and B represent
light sources that send out waves of light that spread out in circular patterns centred on each source. These
waves look rather like the ripples that would spread out on a lake if pebbles were dropped into the water at A
and B. Complex patterns are formed where the waves overlap. C, D, E, and F are places where light and dark
bands would appear on a screen.
pattern. In Young’s version, specially prepared light from two sources was directed to overlap on a
screen. In the region of overlap, instead of a patch of illumination, a series of bands were seen. The
natural explanation was that the waves from the two sources were combining, like the ripples on
water, causing bright patches where they reinforced each other and dark regions where they got in
each other’s way (Figure 1.3).3
Young was able to use these observations to estimate the wavelength of light. For water waves
the wavelength would be the distance between two neighbouring peaks (high points) on the surface.
The wavelength of light is a little harder to interpret, as it is related to the electric and magnetic
fields that comprise the light wave (Section 1.5.1). However, if we take a wave view of light, the
colour is related to the wavelength, with red light being long wavelength compared to blue. Light’s
wavelength is incredibly tiny, in the region of one-tenth of a millionth of a meter. This explains why
we observe sharp shadows. Waves will only bend round objects that are about the same size as their
wavelength. The objects that we see casting shadows are much bigger than the wavelength of light,
hence the light does not leak around them to blur the edges of the shows.
1.3 LASERS AND VIDEO CAMERAS

In the twentieth century, the study of light was revolutionized by the ability to produce precisely
controlled beams that are tightly collimated and made of light that is all the same colour: laser
beams. These days, lasers are among the most ubiquitous of devices. They are found Blue-ray play-
ers, laser pointers, measuring devices and other common pieces of equipment. Lasers are used in
schools to carry out experiments similar to that done by Young, but with considerably more ease.
They have transformed the teaching of optics.
Another remarkable technological development has been that of the CCD camera. CCD stands
for Charge-Coupled Device. They are very sensitive detectors of light. Relatively cheap ones are at
the centre of digital cameras, converting the light falling on them into electrical signals that can be
processed and stored. CCDs are also used in infrared detectors such as those in spy cameras and
security alarms. Even more interestingly, they have helped to transform astronomy by making it
possible to detect very faint objects in the night sky. Such highly sensitive CCDs have to be cooled
to low temperatures so that thermal noise does not mask the image.
10 Quantum Reality
By employing controlled beams from a laser and CCDs to detect very faint amounts of light, we
are able to carry out experiments similar to Young’s basic design, but in ways that he could not have
imagined. The results of these new experiments are so radical that they call into question everything
that we have said so far.
1.4 PHOTONS
Figure 1.4 shows a very simple experiment where a laser beam is aimed directly at a CCD detector
(from now on we will just call them ‘detectors’) the output of which is transferred to a computer and
displayed graphically on a screen.
At moderate intensities, the light seems to be spread equally over the sensitive surface of the
detector. However, as we further reduce the intensity of the beam, the image starts to break up into
a sequence of tiny speckles (Figure 1.4). Reducing the intensity further makes these speckles occur
less frequently, and consequently, they seem to be scattered randomly across the screen. With a
suitable laser, the intensity of the beam can be reduced to the point at which only a single speckle
occurs at any one time with a notable interval between it and the next one.
A natural way of interpreting these results, aside from thinking that the detector is broken, would
be to suggest that the light is a stream of particles. When a particle strikes the detector, it off-loads
its energy and produces a single speckle on the screen. At high intensities, there are millions of
particles arriving within tiny intervals of time, and the detector records a uniform illumination.
Nowadays, we refer to these particles as photons.
Now we have two contradictory experiments: one suggests that light is a wave (Young’s interfer-
ence) whereas the other points to the existence of photons. One simple fix would be to suppose that
lasers produce photons whereas other sources of light produce waves. Unfortunately, this is not the
case. As mentioned earlier, the use of CCDs in astronomy has enabled us to study objects that are
so faint that the light is recorded (with the aid of a telescope) a single photon at a time. Clearly, stars
and galaxies also produce photons.
Although modern day laser/CCD combinations enable us to perform a simple demonstration
that reveals the existence of photons, historically they were detected well before the invention of
the laser. Arthur Holly Compton carried out a crucial experiment4 in 1923 while investigating the
scattering of X-rays5 by atoms.
By 1923 physicists had already successfully produced interference patterns from X-rays, so their
wave nature seemed settled. Given this, Compton expected to find that a beam of X-rays would be
scattered by electrons inside atoms. The electrons would absorb the energy in an X-ray and then
rebroadcast it as a new X-ray sent out in a random direction, but with the same wavelength.
He actually discovered that the X-rays coming off the electrons were of a lower wavelength than
those in the incoming beam. Furthermore, the electron struck by the X-ray recoiled as if hit by a
physical lump of matter. A detailed examination of Compton’s results showed that the energy of the
FIGURE 1.4 Using a laser beam to experiment with light.

FIGURE 1.5 In Compton’s experiment it seemed as if X-ray photons were colliding with electrons like
physical lumps of matter. In the process, they transferred some of their energy to the electron, which recoiled
from the collision.
incoming X-ray had been passed on to the electron in exactly the same fashion that one snooker
ball passes energy onto another when they strike (Figure 1.5). This was completely contrary to the
wave picture of light. Compton could explain these results by replacing the wave picture by one that
had the X-rays as a stream of photons, but nobody could reconcile this with the interference results.
So, in the mid-1920s physicists found themselves in a bit of a mess. The issue of the wave/particle
nature of light, which seemed settled a hundred years before, was now opened up again. However,
this time it was worse. Earlier there had been two competing views of the situation waiting for a
decisive experiment to declare which one was right. Now there were two contrary experiments,
revealing light as a wave in one instance and as a particle in another.
In theoretical terms, a complete resolution to this problem was not to come until the develop-
ment of quantum field theory and its daughter quantum electrodynamics (a continuous development
between the 1930s and the 1950s), both of which are subjects for later. For the moment, we will ‘ride
the paradox’—thinking on the one hand that light is a particle (photon) and on the other hand that it
is a wave - and move on to explore some experiments that demonstrate the split personality of light
even more effectively.
1.5 AN INTERFERENCE EXPERIMENT

A key aspect to the next series of experiments is the use of beam splitters. An ordinary mirror con-
sists of a shiny or silvered surface designed to reflect all incident light, although in practice, no mir-
ror is ever 100% efficient and some energy is lost. With a beam splitter, 50% of the light is reflected
while 50% is transmitted. There are many different varieties of beam splitter, which affect the light
as it is transmitted and reflected in slightly different ways. In this context, I have in mind a dielectric
50:50 beam splitter, although the details of how it works are not necessary for our analysis.
If you direct a high-intensity laser at such a beam splitter, two beams emerge, each one having
half the intensity of the incoming beam.
The next step is to place two ordinary mirrors, one in each path from the first beam splitter,
arranged to divert the beams toward a second beam splitter (see Figure 1.6), where the same
thing happens to each beam: half of the light arriving passes straight through and the other half is
reflected. Finally. two detectors, X and Y, are placed in the beam paths.
Detector X picks up light that has been reflected by the first beam splitter (and so travelled
the ‘top’ path), then transmitted by the second beam splitter. It will also collect light that was
12 Quantum Reality
FIGURE 1.6 Using beam splitters to divide a laser beam that is then recombined at a detector.
FIGURE 1.7 Light waves, like water waves, have peaks (P) and troughs (T). The wavelength of the wave is
the distance between two successive peaks or troughs.
transmitted by the first beam splitter (along the ‘bottom’ path) and reflected by the second one.
Any light reaching detector Y must have been either reflected by both beam splitters (top path) or
transmitted by both (bottom path).
This arrangement of beam splitters, mirrors and detectors is called a Mach–Zehnder interfer-
ometer and similar instruments (without modern electronics) have been used for sensitive opti-
cal experiments since 1891. Once a Mach–Zehnder interferometer is set up using a standard light
source or laser, it is easy to confirm that the intensity reaching each detector depends on the relative
distances along the top and bottom paths. If the equipment is very finely adjusted so that these two
paths are of exactly the same length, detector Y records no light at all, whereas detector X gets all
of the intensity entering the experiment. Without this very critical adjustment, X and Y collect light
in varying relative amounts: if more light arrives at X, then less will reach Y (and vice versa).
In classical (pre-quantum theory) physics this effect is explained by calling on the idea that light
is a wave.
1.5.1 Interference as a Wave Effect

Consider some ripples6 crossing the surface of a lake. In some places, the water level is higher than
normal (these are peaks) and in others, it has dropped below normal (troughs). The wavelength of
the ripple is the distance between two successive peaks, which is the same as the distance between
successive troughs. The frequency of the wave is the rate at which complete cycles (from peak to
trough to peak again) pass a fixed point, and the period is the time taken for one cycle (Figure 1.7).
The motion of any particle in the surface of the water will track through a repetitive cycle from
its starting point to the local peak, then back down to a local trough and up again to the peak. At any
moment, the particle is at a certain phase of its motion. (This is a term borrowed from lunar observations,
where the phase of the moon at any stage in its monthly cycle is an indication of the specific section of
that cycle that the moon is currently displaying.) We can quantify the stage of the cycle by comparing
the motion of particle or point on the wave with a similar point rotating around a circle, as in Figure 1.8.
The phase is then represented by an angle, ϕ , measured in radians. On this measure, two points
on the wave separated by a wavelength will have a phase difference of 2π. The phase difference
between a peak and a trough is π and that between a peak (or trough) and the central undisplaced
line of the wave is π/2.
As light is composed of electric and magnetic fields,7 its wave nature is rather more complicated
than a simple ripple. The peaks and troughs in a light wave are not physical distances, as in the
height of water, instead they are variations in the strength of the field. As this is quite a tricky con-
cept to imagine, we can continue to think of a light as being somewhat like a ripple, provided we
don’t take the analogy too seriously.
Typically ripples on a lake have wavelengths that are comfortably measured in centimetres. Light
waves, on the other hand, have wavelengths better measured in nanometres (10−9 m), which makes them
very sensitive measures of distance. Thinking back to the interference experiment in Figure 1.6, imagine
dividing the distance travelled by a light wave into chunks that are equal to the wavelength of the wave.
Almost certainly, the distances involved will not be a whole number of such chunks. Equally, the device
would have to be very finely calibrated for the two path lengths to be exactly the same number of chunks.
If the distances are not precisely the same, the light travelling along each route will have gone
through a different number of complete waves by the time it gets to the detector. As the light has a
common source at the first beam splitter, the two beams will set off on their different routes in phase
(i.e., in step) with each other (see Figure 1.9). If we could see their peaks and troughs directly, they
FIGURE 1.8 Comparing the phase in a wave motion with a point rotating around a circle. The phase can
then be characterized by an angle, ϕ , in radians.
FIGURE 1.9 The waves labelled A and B are in phase with each other (peak to peak and trough to trough);
waves B and C are exactly out of phase with each other (peak to trough).
14 Quantum Reality
would be marching along peak for peak and trough for trough. However, by the time they get to the
detector, the two beams may no longer be in phase, due to the different distance travelled. One could
be reaching a peak in its cycle as it arrives and the other a trough (like B and C in Figure 1.9). If this
happens, the waves will cancel each other out and there will be little energy entering the detector.
Exact cancellation would only happen if the waves met precisely peak to trough (π phase differ-
ence), which is not possible for any length of time due to small variations in distance (the mirrors
will be shaking slightly) and fluctuations in the laser.
To complete a detailed analysis of our experiment, we also need to take into account any phase
changes that happen to the light at the various mirrors. Generally, when light bounces off a mirror, the
reflected wave is out of phase with the incoming wave by half a wavelength (π phase difference). Things
are slightly different with a dielectric beam splitter. Its specially prepared surface, which is bonded to
a glass block, can reflect light from either side (the dashed line in Figure 1.6 indicates the reflecting
surface). If the reflection takes place from the surface without the light having to pass through the glass
block, then the ordinary π phase shift takes place. However, any light that has to pass through the block
before reaching the reflecting surface is not phase shifted on reflection. However, there is some phase
shift as the wave passes through glass, even if it is not reflected, as illustrated in Figure 1.10.
If we now track the progress of a light wave through the upper arm of the interferometer, we can
see that the cumulative phase shift of the wave by the time that it arrives at detector Y is 2π + φ + φ ′
(Figure 1.11).
FIGURE 1.10 Phase shifts on passing through the glass of a beam splitter. The reflecting surface of the
beam splitter is shown by the dotted line. On the left, a light wave that passes horizontally through the splitter
without reflecting, undergoes a phase shift of φ . On the right, a wave passing vertically through the glass has
its phase shifted by φ ′ .
FIGURE 1.11 A wave passing through the top arm of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer on the way to detector
Y will undergo a series of phase shifts on reflection and passing through the glass of a beam splitter.
FIGURE 1.12 A wave passing through the lower arm of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer on the way to detec-
tor Y will also undergo a series of phase shifts on reflection and passing through the glass of a beam splitter.
In this case the cumulative phase shift is different by π compared with that of the top arm.
FIGURE 1.13 Light waves arriving at detector X via the top and bottom arms of the instrument arrive
exactly in phase with each other, and so constructively interfere.
Applying the same logic to the lower arm of the produces a cumulative phase shift of π + φ + φ ′
(Figure 1.12).
In this analysis, we are assuming that the path lengths through the top and bottom arms are
identical, so the only phase shifts are due to the reflections and the passage through the glass. Given
this fine adjustment of the instrument, the waves arriving at detector Y have a phase difference of
( 2π + φ + φ ′ ) − (π + φ + φ ′ ) = π , so they destructively interfere, and no light is seen by the detector.
On the other hand, detector X will see some illumination as the waves arriving there are exactly
in phase and so constructively interfere (Figure 1.13).
In most experimental setups, the paths through the interferometer are not equal in length. As we
shall see in more detail in Chapters 6 & 7, this also has an impact on the relative phases of the beams,
something that has not been incorporated into the argument thus far, on the assumption that both paths
were exactly the same length. Given the ability to move one of the fully silvered mirrors, so that the
relative path lengths were changed, the experiment could be developed to study the variation of bright-
ness in X and Y as the relative path length varied. In essence, this would be an interference pattern.
Young did not have access to a Mach–Zehnder interferometer (on the very reasonable grounds
that they hadn’t been invented), but he combined light from two sources to produce an interference
pattern on a screen. The results of his experiments could also only be explained by using a wave
theory of light.
16 Quantum Reality
1.5.2 Mach–Zehnder with Photons

With an appropriate laser as a light source, we can turn down the intensity of light entering the
Mach–Zehnder experiment so that the beam resolves into a stream of photons. If we reduce the
laser’s intensity sufficiently, the time between photons emerging from the laser will be more than
the time it takes a photon to completely traverse the apparatus. Then there is only one photon in the
interferometer at any one time. However, we can’t determine exactly when a photon will be emitted
by the laser as that is a random event. Sometimes a few come reasonably close together, sometimes
quite a long time passes between them. We have control over the average rate, but nothing more.
One might expect that the photons arriving at the first beam splitter have a 50:50 chance of pass-
ing through or reflecting off. Another perfectly logical possibility would be that two reduced energy
photons emerge from the mirror, one heading in each direction. It is easy enough to determine
experimentally exactly what happens. All we have to do is place some photon detectors just after
the beam splitter in the path of each beam.
This simple experiment produces an interesting result: half the time the photon is reflected, and
half the time it is transmitted; you never get two photons at the same time. However, there seems to
be no inherent difference between the photons that get through and those that reflect. For example,
the sequence is not so regular as one reflects and the next goes through, and then the next reflects
etc. In fact, there is no pattern to the sequence, except that overall half reflect and half get through.
This is our first encounter with an important facet of the quantum world. Some aspects of nature
lie beyond our predictive ability e.g., which way the photon will go.
This inability to predict with certainty, even in principle, is a specific feature of quantum theory.
Sometimes we lack an advanced grasp of the situation and have created simple models that do not
catch every facet. Sometimes, the situation is so sensitive, we would need an unrealistically precise
grasp of initial conditions in order to make suitable predictions. In either case, it comes down to
ignorance or inability on our part. Quantum reality appears to confront us with a third possibility:
genuinely random events that have no causal handle to give us leverage. These are very deep philo-
sophical and physical waters. Unfortunately, for the moment we must simply note this as something
for further discussion and move on.
Having established that a photon reaching the first beam splitter in a Mach–Zehnder interferom-
eter will either reflect and travel the top path through the device or transmit and follow the bottom
path, our interest must now turn to what happens at the detector end.
For ease, we assume that the detectors are 100% efficient and that no photons get ‘lost’ while
crossing the apparatus.8 If we add together the number of detections at X and Y over a time period,
the answer will correspond to the number of photons emitted by the laser during the same period.
However, the relative number of photons arriving at the two detectors depends on the path lengths:
• If they are exactly equal, then no photons ever arrive at Y.

• If the paths are not exactly equal, then we find that the detection rate at each detector reflects
the intensity of the interference pattern observed when we had the intensity turned up.
To clarify, let’s imagine that during a high-intensity experiment, I had arranged for the path lengths
to be adjusted until 70% of the total light intensity entering the experiment arrived at X and 30% at
Y. Once we turned the intensity down so that we could resolve individual photons, we would find
that 70% of the time a photon is detected at X and 30% of the time at Y. There is never a ‘double
firing’ with photons arriving at X and Y together (as long as we have the laser turned down so that
there is only one photon in the system at any time). This experiment has been done under extremely
well-controlled conditions, and there is no doubt that the photon arrival rate directly reflects the
interference pattern in the way described.
Stated rather quickly in this manner, it doesn’t sound like there is much of a problem here.
Yet there is.
If a photon is a small particle of light, then how can the different paths have any effect on one
single photon?
We confirmed that photons randomly ‘pick’ reflection or transmission at a beam splitter. After that
they proceed along one path or the other to a detector. It is hard to imagine a single photon going along
both paths at the same time. Even if we could sustain that idea for a particle, it is not supported by the
experimental evidence9. Recall that when we put two detectors directly after the beam splitter, they
only picked up one photon at a time down one or the other path. There was no sign that the photon
traversed both paths simultaneously…
Now a wave can do this. It can spread throughout the experiment (think of the ripples formed
when you toss a pebble into a lake) so that parts of the wave travel along each path at the same time.
When the two parts of the wave combine at the far side of the experiment, the information about
both paths is being compared, which leads to the interference pattern.
A single photon must surely have information about only one path, so how can single photon
experiments produce interference patterns?
It transpires that there is a flaw in our argument. It is extremely subtle and cuts to another of the
primary issues that physicists have to face when dealing with the quantum world.
We confirmed that the photons randomly divert at the beam splitter by placing detectors in the
two paths. However, this eliminates any chance of picking up the interference pattern. If the detec-
tors have stopped the photons, then they have not travelled the paths. In principle, this does not tell
us anything about what might happen when no detectors are present.
Of course, it is simply ‘common sense’ to assume that the photons do the same thing with or
without these detectors in the experiment, but we have already seen that the interference pattern for
photons hardly seems to be a matter of common sense.
There is a way to investigate this further. All one has to do is place just one photon detector, Z, after
the beam splitter, say in the path of the reflected beam. If we detect a photon there, then we certainly
won’t get one at the far side of the experiment, at X or Y. On the other hand, if we don’t pick a photon at
Z, we can assume that it has passed through the splitter, rather than reflecting, and so we can expect to see
it at the far end. The experiment is easily done, given the equipment, and confirms that for every photon
leaving the laser we pick one up either at the far end (X or Y) or in the reflected beam (at Z) (Figure 1.14).
FIGURE 1.14 Mach–Zehnder with photons. A photon arriving at the first beam splitter has a 50:50 chance of
being reflected and picked up at the detector. In which case, nothing is seen at X or Y. However, if the photon
is transmitted then there is a 50:50 chance of it arriving at X or Y, no matter what the length of the path is.
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Hempie had, indeed, taken the news of the Crabapple Blossoms
very calmly. It was true she had never cared very much for Prunella,
maintaining always that "she was just her mother over again." All the
same, Prunella remained Master Nathaniel's daughter and Ranulph's
sister, and hence had a certain borrowed preciousness in the eyes of
Hempie. Nevertheless she had refused to indulge in lamentations,
and had preserved on the subject a rather grim silence.
His eye roved restlessly over the familiar room. It was certainly a
pleasant one—fantastic and exquisitely neat. "Neat as a Fairy's
parlour"—the old Dorimarite expression came unbidden to his mind.
There was a bowl of autumn roses on the table, faintly scenting the
air with the hospitable, poetic perfume that is like a welcome to a
little house with green shutters and gay chintzes and lavender-
scented sheets. But the host who welcomes you is dead, the house
itself no longer stands except in your memory—it is the cry of the
cock turned into perfume. Are there bowls of roses in the Fairies'
parlours?
"I say, Hempie, these are new, aren't they?" he said, pointing to a
case of shells on the chimney-piece—very strange shells, as thin as
butterfly's wings and as brightly coloured. And, as well, there were
porcelain pots, which looked as if they had been made out of the
petals of poppies and orchids, nor could their strange shapes ever
have been turned on a potter's wheel in Dorimare.
Then he gave a low whistle, and, pointing to a horse-shoe of pure
gold, nailed on to the wall, he added, "And that, too! I'll swear I've
never seen it before. Has your ship come in, Hempie?"
The old woman looked up placidly from her darning: "Oh! these
came when my poor brother died and the old home was broken up.
I'm glad to have them, as I never remember a time when they
weren't in the old kitchen at home. I often think it's strange how bits
of chiney and brittle stuff like that lives on, long after solid flesh and
bone has turned to dust. And it's a queer thing, Master Nat, as one
gets old, how one lives among the dumb. Bits of chiney ... and the
Silent People," and she wiped a couple of tears from her eyes.
Then she added, "Where these old bits of things came from I never
rightly knew. I suppose the horse-shoe's valuable, but even in bad
harvests my poor father would never turn it into money. He used to
say that it had been above our door in his father's time, and in his
grandfather's time, and it had best stay there. I shouldn't wonder if
he thought it had been dropped by Duke Aubrey's horse. And as for
the shells and pots ... when we were children, we used always to
whisper that they came from beyond the hills."
Master Nathaniel gave a start, and stared at her in amazement.
"From beyond the hills?" he repeated, in a low, horrified voice.
"Aye, and why not?" cried Hempie, undaunted. "I was country-bred,
Master Nat, and I learned not to mind the smell of a fox or of a civet
cat ... or of a Fairy. They're mischievous creatures, I daresay, and
best left alone. But though we can't always pick and choose our
neighbours, neighbourliness is a virtue all the same. For my part, I'd
never have chosen the Fairies for my neighbours—but they were
chosen for me. And we must just make the best of them."
"By the Sun, Moon, and Stars, Hempie!" cried Master Nathaniel in a
horrified voice, "you don't know what you're talking about, you...."
"Now, Master Nat, don't you try on your hoighty-toighty-his-Worship-
the-Mayor-of-Lud-in-the-Mist-knock-you-down-and-be-thankful-for-
small-mercies ways with me!" cried Hempie, shaking her fist at him.
"I know very well what I'm talking about. Long, long ago I made up
my mind about certain things. But a good nurse must keep her mind
to herself—if it's not the same as that of her master and mistress. So
I never let on to you when you were a little boy, nor to Master
Ranulph neither, what I thought about these things. But I've never
held with fennel and such like. If folks know they're not wanted, it just
makes them all the more anxious to come—be they Fairies or
Dorimarites. It's just because we're all so scared of our neighbours
that we get bamboozled by them. And I've always held that a healthy
stomach could digest anything—even fairy fruit. Look at my boy,
now, at Ranulph—young Luke writes he's never looked so bonny.
No, fairy fruit nor nothing else can poison a clean stomach."
"I see," said Master Nathaniel drily. He was fighting against the
sense of comfort that, in spite of himself, her words were giving him.
"And are you quite happy, too, about Prunella?"
"Well, and even if I'm not," retorted Hempie, "where's the good of
crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady
downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with
the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's
worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's
wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but
there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I
was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, 'There's no
clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars.' And why? Because
it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the
hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's
life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like
he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox
dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They
say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so
much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing."
Suddenly, all the pent-up misery and fear of the last thirty years
seemed to be loosening in Master Nathaniel's heart—he was
sobbing, and Hempie, with triumphant tenderness, was stroking his
hands and murmuring soothing words, as she had done when he
was a little boy.
When his sobs had spent themselves, he sat down on a stool at her
feet, and, leaning his head against her knees, said, "Sing to me,
Hempie."
"Sing to you, my dear? And what shall I sing to you? My voice isn't
what it once was ... well, there's that old song—'Columbine,' I think
they call it—that they always seem singing in the streets these days
—that's got a pretty tune."
And in a voice, cracked and sweet, like an old spinet, she began to
sing:
"When Aubrey did live there lived no poor.

The lord and the beggar on roots did dine
With lily, germander, and sops in wine.
With sweet-brier,
And bon-fire,
And strawberry-wire,
And columbine."
As she sang, Master Nathaniel again heard the Note. But, strange to
say, this time it held no menace. It was as quiet as trees and pictures
and the past, as soothing as the drip of water, as peaceful as the
lowing of cows returning to the byre at sunset.
CHAPTER XI
A STRONGER ANTIDOTE THAN REASON
Master Nathaniel sat at his old nurse's feet for some minutes after
she had stopped singing. Both his limbs and his mind seemed to be
bathed in a cool, refreshing pool.
So Endymion Leer and Hempie had reached by very different paths
the same conclusion—that, after all, there was nothing to be
frightened about; that, neither in sky, sea, nor earth was there to be
found a cavern dark and sinister enough to serve as a lair for IT—his
secret fear.
Yes, but there were facts as well as shadows. Against facts Hempie
had given him no charm. Supposing that what had happened to
Prunella should happen to Ranulph? That he should vanish for ever
across the Debatable Hills.
But it had not happened yet—nor should it happen as long as
Ranulph's father had wits and muscles.
He might be a poor, useless creature when menaced by the figments
of his own fancy. But, by the Golden Apples of the West, he would
no longer sit there shaking at shadows, while, perhaps, realities were
mustering their battalions against Ranulph.
It was for him to see that Dorimare became a country that his son
could live in in security.
It was as if he had suddenly seen something white and straight—a
road or a river—cutting through a sombre, moonlit landscape. And
the straight, white thing was his own will to action.
He sprang to his feet and took two or three paces up and down the
room.
"But I tell you, Hempie," he cried, as if continuing a conversation,
"they're all against me. How can I work by myself! They're all against
me, I say."
"Get along with you, Master Nat!" jeered Hempie tenderly. "You were
always one to think folks were against you. When you were a little
boy it was always, 'You're not cross with me, Hempie, are you?' and
peering up at me with your little anxious eyes—and there was me
with no more idea of being cross with you than of jumping over the
moon!"
"But, I tell you, they are all against me," he cried impatiently. "They
blame me for what has happened, and Ambrose was so insulting
that I had to tell him never to put his foot into my house again."
"Well, it isn't the first time you and Master Ambrose have quarrelled
—and it won't be the first time you make it up again. It was, 'Hempie,
Brosie won't play fair!' or 'Hempie, it's my turn for a ride on the
donkey, and Nat won't let me!' And then, in a few minutes, it was all
over and forgotten. So you must just step across to Master
Ambrose's, and walk in as if nothing had happened, and, you'll see,
he'll be as pleased as Punch to see you."
As he listened, he realized that it would be very pleasant to put his
pride in his pocket and rush off to Ambrose and say that he was
willing to admit anything that Ambrose chose—that he was a
hopelessly inefficient Mayor, that his slothfulness during these past
months had been criminal—even, if Ambrose insisted, that he was
an eater of, and smuggler of, and receiver of, fairy fruit, all rolled into
one—if only Ambrose would make friends again.
Pride and resentment are not indigenous to the human heart; and
perhaps it is due to the gardener's innate love of the exotic that we
take such pains to make them thrive.
But Master Nathaniel was a self-indulgent man, and ever ready to
sacrifice both dignity and expediency to the pleasure of yielding to a
sentimental velleity.
"By the Golden Apples of the West, Hempie," he cried joyfully,
"you're right! I'll dash across to Ambrose's before I'm a minute older,"
and he made eagerly for the door.
On the threshold he suddenly remembered how he had seen the
door of his chapel ajar, and he paused to ask Hempie if she had
been up there recently, and had forgotten to lock it.
But she had not been there since early spring.
"That's odd!" said Master Nathaniel.
And then he dismissed the matter from his mind, in the exhilarating
prospect of "making up" with Ambrose.
It is curious what tricks a quarrel, or even a short absence, can play
with our mental picture of even our most intimate friends. A few
minutes later, as Master Ambrose looked at his old playmate
standing at the door, grinning a little sheepishly, he felt as if he had
just awakened from a nightmare. This was not "the most criminally
negligent Mayor with whom the town of Lud-in-the-Mist had ever
been cursed;" still less was it the sinister figure evoked by Endymion
Leer. It was just queer old Nat, whom he had known all his life.
Just as on a map of the country round Lud, in the zig-zagging lines
he could almost see the fish and rushes of the streams they
represented, could almost count the milestones on the straight lines
that stood for roads; so, with regard to the face of his old friend—
every pucker and wrinkle was so familiar that he felt he could have
told you every one of the jokes and little worries of which they were
the impress.
Master Nathaniel, still grinning a little sheepishly, stuck out his hand.
Master Ambrose frowned, blew his nose, tried to look severe, and
then grasped the hand. And they stood there fully two minutes,
wringing each other's hand, and laughing and blinking to keep away
the tears.
And then Master Ambrose said, "Come into the pipe-room, Nat, and
try a glass of my new flower-in-amber. You old rascal, I believe it was
that that brought you!"
A little later when Master Ambrose was conducting Master Nathaniel
back to his house, his arm linked in his, they happened to pass
Endymion Leer.
For a few seconds he stood staring after them as they glimmered
down the lane beneath the faint moonlight. And he did not look
overjoyed.
That night was filled to the brim for Master Nathaniel with sweet,
dreamless sleep. As soon as he laid his head on the pillow he
seemed to dive into some pleasant unknown element—fresher than
air, more caressing than water; an element in which he had not
bathed since he first heard the Note, thirty years ago. And he woke
up the next morning light-hearted and eager; so fine a medicine was
the will to action.
He had been confirmed in it by his talk the previous evening with
Master Ambrose. He had found his old friend by no means crushed
by his grief. In fact, his attitude to the loss of Moonlove rather
shocked Master Nathaniel, for he had remarked grimly that to have
vanished for ever over the hills was perhaps, considering the vice to
which she had succumbed, the best thing that could have happened
to her. There had always been something rather brutal about
Ambrose's common sense.
But he was as anxious as Master Nathaniel himself that drastic
measures should immediately be taken for stopping the illicit trade
and arresting the smugglers. They had decided what these
measures ought to be, and the following days were spent in getting
them approved and passed by the Senate.
Though the name of Master Nathaniel stank in the nostrils of his
colleagues, their respect for the constitution was too deep seated to
permit their opposing the Mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist and High
Seneschal of Dorimare; besides, Master Ambrose Honeysuckle was
a man of considerable weight in their councils, and they were not
uninfluenced by the fact that he was the seconder of all the Mayor's
proposals.
So a couple of Yeomen were placed at each of the gates of Lud, with
orders to examine not only the baggage of everyone entering the
town, but, as well, to rummage through every waggon of hay, every
sack of flour, every frail of fruit or vegetables. As well, the West road
was patrolled from Lud to the confines of the Elfin Marches, where a
consignment of Yeomanry were sent to camp out, with orders day
and night to watch the hills. And the clerk to the Senate was ordered
to compile a dossier of every inhabitant of Lud.
The energy displayed by Master Nathaniel in getting these measures
passed did a good deal towards restoring his reputation among the
townsfolk. Nevertheless that social barometer, Ebeneezor Prim,
continued to send his new apprentice, instead of coming himself, to
wind his clocks. And the grandfather clock, it would seem, was
protesting against the slight. For according to the servants, it would
suddenly move its hands rapidly up and down its dial, which made it
look like a face, alternating between a smirk and an expression of
woe. And one morning Pimple, the little indigo page, ran screaming
with terror into the kitchen, for, he vowed, from the orifice at the
bottom of the dial, there had suddenly come shooting out a green
tongue like a lizard's tail.
As none of Master Nathaniel's measures brought to light a single
smuggler or a single consignment of fairy fruit, the Senate were
beginning to congratulate themselves on having at last destroyed the
evil that for centuries had menaced their country, when Mumchance
discovered in one day three people clearly under the influence of the
mysterious drug and with their mouth and hands stained with
strangely coloured juices.
One of them was a pigmy pedlar from the North, and as he scarcely
knew a word of Dorimarite no information could be extracted from
him as to how he had procured the fruit. Another was a little street
urchin who had found some sherds in a dustbin, but was in too
dazed a state to remember exactly where. The third was the deaf-
mute known as Bawdy Bess. And, of course, no information could be
got from a deaf-mute.
Clearly, then, there was some leakage in the admirable system of
the Senate.
As a result, rebellious lampoons against the inefficient Mayor were
found nailed to the doors of the Guildhall, and Master Nathaniel
received several anonymous letters of a vaguely threatening nature,
bidding him to cease to meddle with matters that did not concern
him, lest they should prove to concern him but too much.
But so well had the antidote of action been agreeing with his
constitution that he merely flung them into the fire with a grim laugh
and a vow to redouble his efforts.
CHAPTER XII
DAME MARIGOLD HEARS THE TAP OF A
WOODPECKER
Miss Primrose Crabapple's trial was still dragging on, clogged by all
the foolish complications arising from the legal fiction that had
permitted her arrest. If you remember, in the eye of the law fairy fruit
was regarded as woven silk, and many days were wasted in a
learned discussion of the various characteristics of gold tissues, stick
tuftaffities, figured satins, wrought grograines, silk mohair and ferret
ribbons.
Urged partly by curiosity and, perhaps, also by a subconscious hope
that in the comic light of Miss Primrose's personality recent events
might lose something of their sinister horror, one morning Dame
Marigold set out to visit her old schoolmistress in her captivity.
It was the first time she had left the house since the tragedy, and, as
she walked down the High Street she held her head high and smiled
a little scornful smile—just to show the vulgar herd that even the
worst disgrace could not break the spirit of a Vigil.
Now, Dame Marigold had very acute senses. Many a time she had
astonished Master Nathaniel by her quickness in detecting the
faintest whiff of any of the odours she disliked—shag, for instance, or
onions.
She was equally quick in psychological matters, and would detect
the existence of a quarrel or love affair long before they were known
to anyone except the parties concerned. And as she made her way
that morning to the Guildhall she became conscious in everything
that was going on round her of what one can only call a change of
key.
She could have sworn that the baker's boy with the tray of loaves on
his head was not whistling, that the maid-servant, leaning out of a
window to tend her mistress's pot-flowers, was not humming the
same tune that they would have been some months ago.
This, perhaps, was natural enough. Tunes, like fruit, have their
seasons, and are, besides, ever forming new species. But even the
voices of the hawkers chanting "Yellow Sand!" or "Knives and
Scissors!" sounded disconcertingly different.
Instinctively, Dame Marigold's delicate nostrils expanded, and the
corners of her mouth turned down in an expression of disgust, as if
she had caught a whiff of a disagreeable smell.
On reaching the Guildhall, she carried matters with a high hand. No,
no, there was no need whatever to disturb his Worship. He had
given her permission to visit the prisoner, so would the guardian take
her up immediately to her room.
Dame Marigold was one of those women who, though they walk
blindfold through the fields and woods, if you place them between
four walls have eyes as sharp as a naturalist's for the objects that
surround them. So, in spite of her depression, her eyes were very
busy as she followed the guardian up the splendid spiral staircase,
and along the panelled corridors, hung, here and there, with beautiful
bits of tapestry. She made a mental note to tell Master Nathaniel that
the caretaker had not swept the staircase, and that some of the
panelling was worm-eaten and should be attended to. And she
would pause to finger a corner of the tapestry and wonder if she
could find some silk just that powder blue, or just that old rose, for
her own embroidery.
"Why, I do declare, this panel is beginning to go too!" she murmured,
pausing to tap on the wall.
Then she cried in a voice of surprise, "I do believe it's hollow here!"
The guardian smiled indulgently—"You are just like the doctor,
ma'am—Doctor Leer. We used to call him the Woodpecker, when he
was studying the Guildhall for his book, for he was for ever hopping
about and tapping on the walls. It was almost as if he were looking
for something, we used to say. And I'd never be surprised myself to
come on a sliding panel. They do say as what those old Dukes were
a wild crew, and it might have suited their book very well to have a
secret way out of their place!" and he gave a knowing wink.
"Yes, yes, it certainly might," said Dame Marigold, thoughtfully.
They had now come to a door padlocked and bolted. "This is where
we have put the prisoner, ma'am," said the guardian, unlocking it.
And then he ushered her into the presence of her old
schoolmistress.
Miss Primrose was sitting bolt upright in a straight backed old
fashioned chair, against a background of fine old tapestries, faded to
the softest loveliest pastel tints—as incongruous with her grotesque
ugliness as had been the fresh prettiness of the Crabapple
Blossoms.
Dame Marigold stood staring at her for a few seconds in silent
indignation. Then she sank slowly on to a chair, and said sternly,
"Well, Miss Primrose? I wonder how you dare sit there so calmly
after the appalling thing you have brought about."
But Miss Primrose was in one of her most exalted moods—"On her
high hobby-horse," as the Crabapple Blossoms used to call it. So
she merely glittered at Dame Marigold contemptuously out of her
little eyes, and, with a lordly wave of her hand, as if to sweep away
from her all mundane trivialities, she exclaimed pityingly, "My poor
blind Marigold! Perhaps of all the pupils who have passed through
my hands you are the one who are the least worthy of your noble
birthright."
Dame Marigold bit her lip, raised her eyebrows, and said in a low
voice of intense irritation, "What do you mean, Miss Primrose?"
Miss Primrose cast her eyes up to the ceiling, and, in her most
treacly voice she answered, "The great privilege of having been born
a woooman!"
Her pupils always maintained that "woman," as pronounced by Miss
Primrose, was the most indecent word in the language.
Dame Marigold's eyes flashed: "I may not be a woman, but, at any
rate, I am a mother—which is more than you are!" she retorted.
Then, in a voice that at each word grew more indignant, she said,
"And, Miss Primrose, do you consider that you yourself have been
'worthy of your noble birthright' in betraying the trust that has been
placed in you? Are vice and horror and disgrace and breaking the
hearts of parents 'true womanliness' I should like to know? You are
worse than a murderer—ten times worse. And there you sit, gloating
over what you have done, as if you were a martyr or a public
benefactor—as complacent and smug and misunderstood as a
princess from the moon forced to herd goats! I do really believe...."
But Miss Primrose's shrillness screamed down her low-toned
indignation: "Shake me! Stick pins in me! Fling me into the Dapple!"
she shrieked. "I will bear it all with a smile, and wear my shame like a
flower given by him!"
Dame Marigold groaned in exasperation: "Who, on earth, do you
mean by 'him', Miss Primrose?"
Then her irrepressible sense of humour broke out in a dimple, and
she added: "Duke Aubrey or Endymion Leer?"
For, of course, Prunella had told her all the jokes about the goose
and the sage.
At this question Miss Primrose gave an unmistakable start; "Duke
Aubrey, of course!" she answered, but the look in her eyes was sly,
suspicious, and distinctly scared.
None of this was lost upon Dame Marigold. She looked her slowly up
and down with a little mocking smile; and Miss Primrose began to
writhe and to gibber.
"Hum!" said Dame Marigold, meditatively.
She had never liked the smell of Endymion Leer's personality.
The recent crisis had certainly done him no harm. It had doubled his
practice, and trebled his influence.
Besides, it cannot have been Miss Primrose's beauty and charms
that had caused him to pay her recently such marked attentions.
At any rate, it could do no harm to draw a bow at a venture.
"I am beginning to understand, Miss Primrose," she said slowly. "Two
... outsiders, have put their heads together to see if they could find a
plan for humiliating the stupid, stuck-up, 'so-called old families of
Lud!' Oh! don't protest, Miss Primrose. You have never taken any
pains to hide your contempt for us. And I have always realized that
yours was not a forgiving nature. Nor do I blame you. We have
laughed at you unmercifully for years—and you have resented it. All
the same I think your revenge has been an unnecessarily violent
one; though, I suppose, to 'a true woooman,' nothing is too mean,
too spiteful, too base, if it serves the interests of 'him'!"
But Miss Primrose had gone as green as grass, and was gibbering
with terror: "Marigold! Marigold!" she cried, wringing her hands, "How
can you think such things? The dear, devoted Doctor! The best and
kindest man in Lud-in-the-Mist! Nobody was angrier with me over
what he called my 'criminal carelessness' in allowing that horrible
stuff to be smuggled into my loft, I assure you he is quite rabid on the
subject of ... er ... fruit. Why, when he was a young man at the time
of the great drought he was working day and night trying to stop it,
he...."
But not for nothing was Dame Marigold descended from generations
of judges. Quick as lightning, she turned on her: "The great drought?
But that must be forty years ago ... long before Endymion Leer came
to Dorimare."
"Yes, yes, dear ... of course ... quite so ... I was thinking of what
another doctor had told me ... since all this trouble my poor head
gets quite muddled," gibbered Miss Primrose. And she was shaking
from head to foot.
Dame Marigold rose from her chair, and stood looking down on her
in silence for a few seconds, under half-closed lids, with a rather
cruel little smile.
Then she said, "Good-bye, Miss Primrose. You have provided me
with most interesting food for thought."
And then she left her, sitting there with frightened face against the
faded tapestry.
That same day, Master Nathaniel received a letter from Luke
Hempen that both perplexed and alarmed him.
It was as follows:
Your Worship,—I'd be glad if you'd take Master Ranulph
away from this farm, because the widow's up to mischief,
I'm sure of that, and some of the folks about here say as
what in years gone by she murdered her husband, and
she and somebody else, though I don't know who, seem
to have a grudge against Master Ranulph, and, if I might
take the liberty, I'll just tell your Worship what I heard.
It was this way—one night, I don't know how it was, but I
couldn't get to sleep, and thinking that a bite, may be, of
something would send me off, towards midnight I got up
from my bed to go and look in the kitchen for a bit of
bread. And half-way down the stairs I heard the sound of
low voices, and someone said, "I fear the Chanticleers,"
so I stood still where I was, and listened. And I peeped
down and the kitchen fire was nearly out, but there was
enough left for me to see the widow, and a man wrapped
up in a cloak, sitting opposite to her with his back to the
stairs, so I couldn't see his face. Their talk was low and at
first I could only hear words here and there, but they kept
making mention of the Chanticleers, and the man said
something like keeping the Chanticleers and Master
Ambrose Honeysuckle apart, because Master Ambrose
had had a vision of Duke Aubrey. And if I hadn't known the
widow and how she was a deep one and as fly as you
make them, I'd have thought they were two poor daft old
gossips, whose talk had turned wild and nasty with old
age. And then the man laid his hand on her knee, and his
voice was low, but this time it was so clear that I could
hear it all, and I think I can remember every word of it, so
I'll write it down for your Worship: "I fear counter orders.
You know the Chief and his ways—at any moment he
might betray his agents. Willy Wisp gave young
Chanticleer fruit without my knowledge. And I told you how
he and that doitered old weaver of yours have been
putting their heads together, and that's what has
frightened me most."
And then his voice became too low for me to hear, till he
said, "Those who go by the Milky Way often leave
footprints. So let him go by the other."
And then he got up to go, and I crept back to my room.
But not a wink of sleep did I get that night for thinking over
what I had heard. For though it seemed gibberish, it gave
me the shivers, and that's a fact. And mad folks are often
as dangerous as bad ones, so I hope your Worship will
excuse me writing like this, and that you'll favour me with
an answer by return, and take Master Ranulph away, for I
don't like the look in the widow's eye when she looks at
him, that I don't.
And hoping this finds your Worship well as it leaves me,—I
am, Your Worship's humble obedient servant,
LUKE HEMPEN.
How Master Nathaniel longed to jump on to his horse and ride post-
haste to the farm! But that was impossible. Instead, he immediately
despatched a groom with orders to ride day and night and deliver a
letter to Luke Hempen, which bade him instantly take Ranulph to the
farm near Moongrass (a village that lay some fifteen miles north of
Swan-on-the-Dapple) from which for years he had got his cheeses.
Then he sat down and tried to find some meaning in the mysterious
conversation Luke had overheard.
Ambrose seeing a vision! An unknown Chief! Footprints on the Milky
Way!
Reality was beginning to become very shadowy and menacing.
He must find out something about this widow. Had she not once
appeared in the law-courts? He decided he must look her up without
a moment's delay.
He had inherited from his father a fine legal library, and the
bookshelves in his pipe-room were packed with volumes bound in
vellum and old calf of edicts, codes, and trials. Some of them
belonged to the days before printing had been introduced into
Dorimare, and were written in the crabbed hand of old town-clerks.
It made the past very real, and threw a friendly, humourous light
upon the dead, to come upon, when turning those yellow parchment
pages, some personal touch of the old scribe's, such as a
sententious or facetious insertion of his own—for instance, "The Law
bides her Time, but my Dinner doesn't!" or the caricature in the
margin of some forgotten judge. It was just as if one of the grotesque
plaster heads on the old houses were to give you, suddenly, a sly
wink.
But it was the criminal trials that, in the past, had given Master
Nathaniel the keenest pleasure. The dry style of the Law was such a
magnificent medium for narrative. And the little details of every-day
life, the humble objects of daily use, became so startlingly vivid,
when, like scarlet geraniums breaking through a thick autumn mist,
they blazed out from that grey style ... so vivid, and, often, fraught
with such tragic consequences.
Great was his astonishment when he discovered from the index that
it was among the criminal trials that he must look for the widow
Gibberty's. What was more, it was a trial for murder.
Surely Endymion Leer had told him, when he was urging him to send
Ranulph to the farm, that it had been a quite trivial case, concerning
an arrear of wages, or something, due to a discharged servant?
As a matter of fact, the plaintiff, a labourer of the name of Diggory
Carp, had been discharged from the service of the late Farmer
Gibberty. But the accusation he brought against the widow was that
she had poisoned her husband with the sap of osiers.
However, when he had finished the trial, Master Nathaniel found
himself in complete sympathy with the judge's pronouncement that
the widow was innocent, and with his severe reprimand to the
plaintiff, for having brought such a serious charge against a worthy
woman on such slender grounds.
But he could not get Luke's letter out of his head, and he felt that he
would not have a moment's peace till the groom returned with news
from the farm.
As he sat that evening by the parlour fire, wondering for the
hundredth time who the mysterious cloaked stranger could have
been whose back had been seen by Luke, Dame Marigold suddenly
broke the silence by saying, "What do you know about Endymion
Leer, Nat?"
"What do I know of Endymion Leer?" he repeated absently. "Why,
that he's a very good leach, with very poor taste in cravats, and, if
possible, worse taste in jokes. And that, for some unknown reason,
he has a spite against me...."
He broke off in the middle of his sentence, and muttered beneath his
breath, "By the Sun, Moon and Stars! Supposing it should be...."
Luke's stranger had said he feared the Chanticleers.
A strange fellow, Leer! The Note had once sounded in his voice.
Where did he come from? Who was he? Nobody knew in Lud-in-the-
Mist.
And, then, there were his antiquarian tastes. They were generally
regarded as a harmless, unprofitable hobby. And yet ... the past was
dim and evil, a heap of rotting leaves. The past was silent and
belonged to the Silent People.... But Dame Marigold was asking
another question, a question that had no apparent connection with
the previous one: "What was the year of the great drought?"
Master Nathaniel answered that it was exactly forty years ago, and
added quizzically, "Why this sudden interest in history, Marigold?"
Again she answered by asking him a question. "And when did
Endymion Leer first arrive in Dorimare?"
Master Nathaniel began to be interested. "Let me see," he said
thoughtfully. "It was certainly long before we married. Yes, I
remember, we called him in to a consultation when my mother had
pleurisy, and that was shortly after his arrival, for he could still only
speak broken Dorimarite ... it must be thirty years ago."
"I see," said Dame Marigold drily. "But I happen to know that he was
already in Dorimare at the time of the drought." And she proceeded
to repeat to him her conversation that morning with Miss Primrose.
"And," she added, "I've got another idea," and she told him about the
panel in the Guildhall that sounded hollow and what the guardian
had said about the woodpecker ways of Endymion Leer. "And if,
partly for revenge for our coldness to him, and partly from a love of
power," she went on, "it is he who has been behind this terrible affair,
a secret passage would be very useful in smuggling, and would
explain how all your precautions have been useless. And who would
be more likely to know about a secret passage in the Guildhall than
Endymion Leer!"
"By the Sun, Moon and Stars!" exclaimed Master Nathaniel excitedly,
"I shouldn't be surprised if you were right, Marigold. You've got a
head on your shoulders with something in it more useful than
porridge!"
And Dame Marigold gave a little complacent smile.
Then he sprang from his chair, "I'm off to tell Ambrose!" he cried
eagerly.
But would he be able to convince the slow and obstinate mind of
Master Ambrose? Mere suspicions are hard to communicate. They
are rather like the wines that will not travel, and have to be drunk on
the spot.
At any rate, he could but try.
"Have you ever had a vision of Duke Aubrey, Ambrose?" he cried,
bursting into his friend's pipe-room.
Master Ambrose frowned with annoyance. "What are you driving at,
Nat?" he said, huffily.

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• Presents a thorough grounding in the theoretical machinery of quantum physics

Second edition published 2023

and by CRC Press

© 2023 Jonathan Allday

First edition published by CRC Press 2009

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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

ISBN: 978-1-032-12734-7 (hbk)

Pictogram Credit: Emrys

Chapter 1 Our First Encounter with the Quantum World: Light................................................... 7

Chapter 3 Quantum States........................................................................................................... 35

3.3.3 Relating Amplitudes to Probabilities..................................................44

Chapter 7 Free Particles............................................................................................................... 91

7.2.1 Classical Waves...................................................................................92

Chapter 8 Identical Particles........................................................................................................99

Chapter 9 Scattering Identical Bosons....................................................................................... 115

Chapter 10 Spin............................................................................................................................ 127

Chapter 11 Fermion States........................................................................................................... 143

Chapter 12 Continuous Bases...................................................................................................... 163

Chapter 13 Uncertainty................................................................................................................ 181

Chapter 14 The Equations of Quantum Theory.......................................................................... 191

14.2 Ehrenfest’s Theorem....................................................................................... 194

Chapter 15 Constrained Particles................................................................................................205

Chapter 16 Genealogy................................................................................................................. 233

Chapter 17 Planck and Einstein................................................................................................... 237

Chapter 18 Bohr........................................................................................................................... 247

Chapter 19 Heisenberg................................................................................................................. 259

Chapter 20 De Broglie & Schrödinger........................................................................................ 267

Chapter 21 Dirac.......................................................................................................................... 275

Chapter 22 Conclusions............................................................................................................... 283

Chapter 23 Quantum Correlations............................................................................................... 287

23.2.1 The EPR Argument........................................................................... 288

Chapter 24 Quantum Computing................................................................................................. 311

Chapter 25 Density Operators...................................................................................................... 325

Chapter 26 Interpretations........................................................................................................... 335

26.2.4 Measurement..................................................................................... 343

Chapter 27 The Copenhagen Interpretation................................................................................ 353

Chapter 28 The Many Worlds Interpretation............................................................................... 373

28.7 Criticisms of the Many Worlds View............................................................. 388

Chapter 29 Assorted Alternatives................................................................................................ 393

Chapter 30 Consistent Histories................................................................................................... 401

Chapter 31 The Ontological Interpretation.................................................................................. 425

Chapter 32 Quantum Field Theory.............................................................................................. 443

Chapter 33 Personal Conclusions.................................................................................................469

Appendix List of Important Rules.............................................................................................. 475

THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING (FIRST EDITION)

THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING (SECOND EDITION)

1.2 A LITTLE LIGHT READING

1.3 LASERS AND VIDEO CAMERAS

1.5 AN INTERFERENCE EXPERIMENT

1.5.1 Interference as a Wave Effect

1.5.2 Mach–Zehnder with Photons