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Volume 14: Pages 132-143, 2001

A Deeper Level of Quantum Mechanics

Danker L. N. Vink

Playa Hundu 19, Groot Santa Martha, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles

The tendency toward coherent behavior in quantum‐mechanical systems is here considered an intrinsic characteristic of quantum particles: it is assumed that each particle in the system has instant “knowledge” about the other particles around it in space‐time via a mechanism of advanced and retarded “messenger” waves. With this hypothesis Bohr's wave‐particle duality is solved, and phenomena of interference can be explained; obtaining “which‐way” information upsets the mechanism and the interference pattern is then destroyed. Single‐particle interference experiments can demonstrate the hypothesis to be valid; a more acute experiment for testing is proposed. It appears that Heisenberg's uncertainty relations are caused by an influence of the past. A mathematical description of the new mechanism is possible with Feynman's path‐integral method; Schrödinger's wave equation can be derived from the hypothesis. The new theory is deterministic, but the path of a single particle cannot be calculated because of unknown influences from particles in the past and future. The new hidden‐variable theory with instantaneously interconnected particles is nonlocal, but neither the principle of local causality nor the special theory of relativity is violated.

Keywords: quantum coherence, basis of quantum mechanics, generalized absorber theory, nanotechnology, complementary principle, single‐particle interference experiments, uncertainty relations, path‐integral method, wave equation, noncomputability, nonlocality, flow of time

Received: April 12, 1999; Published online: December 15, 2008