Overview

Because of continuing debates about foundational issues as well as the recent consensus about non-locality, it is time to resolve the long-standing quantum enigmas.  These include wave-particle duality, the double-slit experiment, quantum randomness, entanglement, superpositions, and measurement. This book presents that resolution, based on the insights that (1)  quantum field theory tells us that reality comprises a set of universal quantized fields that fill the universe and (2) standard quantum mechanics is the non-relativistic limit of quantum field theory. An immediate consequence is that there are no particles and that quanta such as photons and electrons are highly unified (""coherent""), spatially extended bundles of field energy.  Every quantum object is always a wave in a field.  It is never a particle. As Steven Weinberg puts it, ""The basic ingredients of nature are fields; particles are derivative phenomena."" This immediately resolves, for one example, the puzzle of the double-slit experiment in which quanta such as photons and electrons individually interfere like waves as they pass through the slits yet they impact the screen like tiny particles.  The resolution:  each photon or electron is actually a wave that extends coherently across both slits and across the entire interference pattern, and collapses to a far smaller, atom-sized wave (not a particle) upon entangling non-locally with the screen. Thus quantum physicists can finally get their act together.  It's about time:  After more than 120 years, quantum physics still harbors embarrassing puzzles and physicists remain unable to reach a consensus about what the theory means.  Large questions like ""What is quantum physics about?"" and ""What is the meaning of the quantum state?"" elicit diverse replies, all different yet all offered with supreme confidence.  Every science has healthy differences of opinion, but quantum physics is beyond the pale. As Fields and their Quanta shows, we can dispense with the diverse interpretations such as consciousness-based views, the hypothesis that other universes are involved in wave function collapse, and the Copenhagen view that there is no quantum world.  We can probably also dispense with the suggested reformulations such as the guiding wave hypothesis and various collapse mechanisms, although experimental tests of these are worth doing.  Most of these are inspired by the measurement problem, but recent clarification concerning entanglement and non-locality shows that the measurement process is not paradoxical, and that standard quantum physics predicts collapse to a single outcome.  Quantum physics can thus return to being a normal, objective, scientific endeavor with no special interpretation outside of standard (since Copernicus) scientific realism:  Nature exists on its own with no need for observers, and we learn about nature by applying logical reasoning to natural phenomena as revealed by observation and experiment.    

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Art Hobson has written five previous books: • Concepts in Statistical Mechanics, a research monograph (Gordon and Breach Science Publishers 1971, Chemical Rubber Company 1987); • Physics and Human Affairs, a non-mathematical textbook for non-science college students (John Wiley & Sons 1982); • The Future of Land-Based Strategic Missiles, (American Institute of Physics 1989); co-editor and co-author with 9 other authors; • Physics: Concepts & Connections, (Pearson/Addison-Wesley 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006, 2010), another textbook for non-science college students; • Tales of the Quantum (Oxford University Press 2017), a non-mathematical overview of quantum physics. He has written numerous technical and pedagogical physics papers, including the following pre-cursors to Fields and their Quanta: • ""There are no particles, there are only fields, ""American Journal of Physics 81, 211-223 (2013); • ""A realist analysis of six controversial quantum issues,"" in Mario Bunge Festschrift (Springer 2019), pp. 329-348; • ""Entanglement and the measurement problem,"" Quantum Engineering 2022, ID 5889159 (2022). Hobson was born in Philadelphia in 1934 and moved to Manhattan, Kansas in 1945. He received a Bachelor of Music degree in 1955. After 2 years in the Army in Germany, he spent six months in New York City trying but failing to be a professional jazz musician. He then switched to physics and enrolled at Kansas State University in 1958, graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1960, and received a physics PhD in 1964. He then joined the University of Arkansas faculty where he taught and did research until retiring in 1999. He has authored over 175 professional articles, mostly theoretical physics and physics education. He received the American Association of Physics Teachers' 2006 ""Millikan Award for Teaching Excellence"" for bringing scientific literacy to all college students, and received a ""Master Teacher"" award from his university. Since ""retiring"" in 1999, Hobson has had time to study his favorite topic, quantum foundations. He maintains an office in the physics department and commutes to work on his bicycle.

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