Quantum mechanics, classical reality, and Copenhagen

The demise of classical realism is traced to a meeting in 1926 between Bohr and Schrödinger, as recalled by Heisenberg [Physics and Beyond; Encounters and Conversations(Harper, 1972)]. The arguments are revisited today by imagining an encounter of the same men after the path integral formulation, or “sum over histories” model was introduced. Schrödinger wants a fully relativistic quantum theory that can be visualized, while Bohr favors existing theories based on mathematical models. Recent experimental evidence suggests that excited atomic states consist of three field sources; nucleus, electron, and photon; that can be described by an action integral as a fully relativistic quantum theory. The proposed derivation conceives of photons as four-dimensional localizations of field energy that are both determinable and exact. Probability distributions, such as interference patterns on a screen, are interpreted as projections in two dimensions of four-dimensional structure.