Book · Language · Media · Problem

Advancing QFT visualization – further demystification?

John Healy

[Draft 12-30-2024]

Yeah, quantum physics is weird. What might be called Weirdness 1.0 (QM), 1.1 (QED), 1.2 (QCD), etc., as I’ve written about, have embedded frozen tropes in the popular psyche. But can’t we do better?

When physicists talk about analogies – use everyday language (terms) to talk about the quantum realm – and connections with our everyday world, yes, they know what they mean. Namely, the mathematical framework and practical use (as in grand particle accelerators, GPS, quantum computers, photonics, cool stuff in our smartphones, etc.). Typically nary an equation or mention of the word field, as an example.

But that physicist-to-physicist rapport is not the takeaway for mere mortals, and not what’s in the many recaps by science communicators.

So, is there any progress in visualization, in demystifying quantum field theory (QFT), getting to what is actually an even more profound weirdness. Like Weirdness 2.0?

Well, to illustrate the current landscape of language, here’re three examples which grabbed my attention recently:

.1. PBS NOVA’s episode “Decoding the Universe: Quantum” (Nov 6, 2024)

My general reaction is: a hackneyed recap, not moving the dial beyond Quantum Weirdness 1.0.

Here’s a summary from my annotated transcript of the show.

Good production values. For concepts, the usual suspects (not really new voices or new insights from old voices), Typical touting of how QM is historically revolutionary and important and practical.

There’s the black hole mantra, and usual tropes, … yet an uneven vocabulary level, sometimes advanced word bombs.

The physics callouts are a mix of ‘quantum mechanics’ [used 16 times] … and ‘quantum physics’ [used 15 times] … but the episode closes with ‘quantum mechanics’ … mechanics is like working on a car? – machinery … There’s no mention of fields or ‘quantum field theory’ … I felt stuck in quantum physics 1.0.

And, naturally, there’s nothing like ending (after mostly a classical detour) with spookiness – ‘quantum entanglement.’ But this exposition has been done many times, often better (and on smaller budgets). I’m looking for a better metaphor than the term ‘connected’ for entangled quanta – to avoid any notion of springs between balls, for example. But this chapter offers a path to Weirdness 2.0, especially via quantum computing. But there’s that term ‘superposition’ in the way for most people (and an allusion to Bloch sphere).

The chapter on atomic clocks is good (almost as sacred artifacts), a promo for introducing the NIST, GPS. As well as a ramble into more detail about an atomic model, a term drop for ‘resonant frequency’.

Lasers, of course – practically everyone’s familiar with laser pointers. But the discussion misses an opportunity to clarify laser purity (how near to true monochromatic light). Good promo for LIGO.

The best chapters, in fact, mainly deal with the classical physics of Relativity theory (special, general).

Basically, this episode is like a highlight reel, perhaps to inspire some to explore more & deeper, but it doesn’t really build from everyday curiosity or connections like other more engaged science communicators (like Wired’s series on “5 levels” of understanding). Probably a generative AI might do as well, scraping from textbooks.

The biggest missed opportunity is that the popular wave-particle analogy (the particle analogy itself) conflates the point of the historical observations with billiard balls rather than the notion of ‘discrete’ and ‘indivisible’ and ‘localized’ – in the context of measurements. Down the rabbit hole again, eh. Strassler’s book (referenced below) addresses this conflation.

• YouTube > NOVA PBS Official > “Decoding the Universe: Quantum” (Nov 6, 2024)

(Description)
When we look at the world at the tiniest scales in the subatomic realm, things get weird – very weird. Welcome to the quantum universe, where particles can spin in two directions at once [hmm], observing something changes it [hmm], and something on one side of the galaxy can instantly affect something on the other, as if the space between them didn’t exist [hmm]. Buckle up for a wild ride through the discoveries that proved all of this to be true …

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
08:07 What is Quantum Mechanics?
15:55 Atomic Clocks: The Science of Time
26:41 Detecting Ripples in Space-Time
37:37 What is Quantum Entanglement?
50:34 Conclusion

.2. New book

Wow … finally … a popular science book which “gives even the lay reader a comprehensive but accessible perspective on physics” … maybe moves the dial toward Weirdness 2.0?

Here’s the Big Think’s book review / promo.

(quote)
It’s rare that a book comes along that changes the way experts in their field think about the fundamentals, while simultaneously being accessible and informative to those without expert knowledge themselves.

Strassler, a world-renowned expert in particle physics in his own right (and longtime science blogger), takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of physics from a conceptual point of view.
(end quote)

Topics include: motion-energy, the “coasting law” (aka Newton’s first law), mass, waves (medium, field, wave), fields … the quantum … “the Cheshire Cat’s grin — a grin without the cat.”

Can there be a field or wave without a medium?

• Big Think > “‘Waves in an Impossible Sea’: The 2024 science book of the year” by Ethan Siegel (December 17, 2024) – An exclusive interview with Matt Strassler on his journey into fundamental physics, an explanation of the Higgs field.

(excerpts)
Matt Strassler (MS): It always bothers me when we physicists water down our science too far, so that the result is misleading or even false [physics phib]. I feel that doing so underestimates the intelligence of our readers and listeners. To make matters worse, our bad explanations often contradict our good ones, creating logical inconsistencies that make it impossible for a non-expert to make sense of what we’re saying. There has to be a more intelligent and more honest way to convey the lessons of science.

I took it as a personal challenge to write a book with a correct yet non-technical explanation of the Higgs field and how it works.

In the end, though, the Higgs field was really a subplot. The heart of the book is its story of fields and of how elementary particles arise from them, and why an elementary particle like an electron is more a rapidly vibrating wave than a tiny dot. Once this is clear, understanding what the Higgs field does and why it’s so important, and what the discovery of the Higgs boson really means, becomes much easier.

MS: I like your phib better than most, because it avoids misrepresenting what mass is. The ones that compare the Higgs field to a space-filling soup or molasses, and say that the Higgs field gives mass to things by slowing them down, are literally medieval! They violate two of Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion, encouraging us to imagine, falsely, that having mass makes it difficult for an object to move. [Spot on!]

… elementary particles are vibrating entities [Yeah!]

A third and very important choice was to replace the word “particle”, in the last third of the book, with the word “wavicle”, a term from the 1920s, which is also used these days by some other scientists, including Neil deGrasse Tyson and Frank Wilczek. The problem with calling an electron a “particle” is that it immediately makes you imagine an object in the shape of a tiny dot. But in fact, in quantum field theory (the modern language of particle physics), an electron is never a dot. It is always spread out to a greater or lesser degree, and it is wavelike in various ways, including the crucial fact that it is always vibrating. What makes it “particle-like” is not its shape but its indivisibility — the fact that it travels as an indivisible unit.

Joining the suffix “-icle” to the word “wave” captures both the shape of electrons and the fact that they come in individual units — that you can’t divide an electron into pieces. In this sense, “particle” creates misconceptions about what electrons and their cousins are, whereas “wavicle” opens our minds to the unfamiliar ideas that are needed to understand electrons better.

And so the mass of an elementary “wavicle”, a vibrating entity, is proportional to the energy that it carries inside it, which in turn is proportional to the frequency of its vibration. [Quantum topology is another matter.]

[Yes, constraints are important!] A top quark is short-lived [unlike electrons] because its vibration is damped by the weak nuclear force and the Higgs force, which, together with quantum physics, cause it to decay away, transforming it into a W boson and a bottom quark. The damping also causes the top quark to have an imprecisely defined frequency, and thus a precise measurement of its mass won’t give exactly the same answer every time.

MS: The idea that both may have a medium — more precisely, that gravity and electromagnetism are properties of a single medium — is an old idea from the 1920s, due to Kaluza and Klein, who were thinking about extra dimensions of space.

Book reference (currently reading)

• Strassler, Matt (2024). Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges from the Cosmic Ocean. Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

.3. Institute of Art and Ideas video interview with Roger Penrose

Watch “We need to ‘gravitise’ quantum mechanics, not quantise gravity | Roger Penrose | Full interview” on YouTube

Roger Penrose is a world-renowned mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is best known for his work on general relativity and sharing the Wolf Prize for Physics with Stephen Hawking for his work on black holes.

[Comments TBS]

• YouTube > The Institute of Art and Ideas > “We need to ‘gravitise’ quantum mechanics, not quantise gravity | Roger Penrose | Full interview” (Dec 26, 2024) – Sir Roger Penrose speaks about key turning points in his life’s work, and the ‘blatant contradiction’ in quantum mechanics that is yet to be solved.

00:00 Introduction
00:29 What are you most proud of in your career?
01:58 The collapse of the wave function
07:50 The Diósi–Penrose model
11:01 Were you ever led to discover a breakthrough by flawed reasoning?
12:02 What has been your equivalent of Einstein’s ‘happiest thought’?
12:52 The Kennedy assassination
14:32 Working out Twistor theory in a car ride back from southern Texas
23:35 Two-component vs four-component spinors
24:42 Meeting Paul Dirac
27:48 Was Einstein wrong?
28:50 The wrong wrongness

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