Contents

Preface / ix
A Mysterious Force of Harmony / 1
Before the Beginning / 7
Thomas Youngs Experiment / 17
Plancks Constant / 29
The Copenhagen School / 37
De Broglies Pilot Waves / 49
Schrdinger and His Equation / 55
Heisenbergs Microscope / 73
Wheelers Cat / 83
The Hungarian Mathematician / 95
Enter Einstein / 103
Bohm and Aharanov / 123
John Bells Theorem / 137
The Dream of Clauser, Horne, and Shimony / 149
Alain Aspect / 177
Laser Guns / 191
Triple Entanglement / 203
The Ten-Kilometer Experiment / 235
Teleportation: Beam Me Up, Scotty / 241
Quantum Magic: What Does It All Mean? / 249
Acknowledgements / 255
References / 266
Index / 269

Preface
My own suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but
queerer than we can suppose.J.B.S. Haldane
In the fall of 1972, I was an undergraduate in mathematics and physics at the University of
California at Berkeley. There I had the good fortune to attend a special lecture given on
campus by Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of the quantum theory. While today I
have some reservations about the role Heisenberg played in historyat the time other
scientists left in protest of Nazi policies, he stayed behind and was instrumental in Hitlers
attempts to develop the Bombnevertheless his talk had a profound, positive effect on my
life, for it gave me a deep appreciation for the quantum theory and its place in our efforts to
under-stand nature.
Quantum mechanics is the strangest eld in all of science. From our everyday perspective
of life on Earth, nothing makes sense in quantum theory, the theory about the laws of nature
that govern the realm of the very small (as well as some large systems, such as
superconductors). The Word itself, quantum, denotes a small packet of energya very
small one. In quantum mechanics, as the quantum theory is called, we deal with the basic
building blocks of matter, the constituent particles from which everything in the universe is
made. These particles include atoms, molecules, neutrons, protons, electrons, quarks, as
well as photonsthe basic units of light. All these objects (if indeed they can be called
objects) are much smaller than anything the human eye can see. At this level, suddenly, all
the rules of behavior with which we are familiar no longer hold. Entering this strange new
world of the very small is an experience as baffling and bizarre as Alices adventures in
Wonderland. In this unreal quantum world, particles are waves, and waves are particles. A
ray of light, therefore, is both an electromagnetic wave undulating through space, and a
stream of tiny particles speeding toward the observer, in the sense that some quantum
experiments or phenomena reveal the wave nature of light, while others the particle nature
of the same lightbut never both aspects at the same time. And yet, before we observe a
ray of light, it is both a wave and a stream of particles.
In the quantum realm everything is fuzzythere is a hazy quality to all the entities we deal
with, be they light or electrons or atoms or quarks. An uncertainty principle reigns in
quantum mechanics, where most things cannot be seen or felt or known with precision, but
only through a haze of probability and chance. Scientic predictions about outcomes are
statistical in nature and are given in terms of probabilitieswe can only predict the most
likely location of a particle, not its exact position. And we can never determine both a
particles location and its momentum with good accuracy. Furthermore, this fog that
permeates the quantum world can never go away. There are no hidden variables, which,
if known, would increase our precision beyond the natural limit that rules the quantum
world. The uncertainty, the fuzziness, the probabilities, the dispersion simply cannot go

awaythese mysterious, ambiguous, veiled elements are an integral part of this

wonderland.
Even more inexplicable is the mysterious superposition of states of quantum systems. An
electron (a negatively-charged elementary particle) or photon (a quantum of light) can be in
a superposition of two or more states. No longer do we speak about here or there; in the
quantum world we speak about here and there. In a certain sense, a photon, part of a
stream of light shone on a screen with two holes, can go through both holes at the same
time, rather than the expected choice of one hole or the other. The electron in orbit around
the nucleus is potentially at many locations at the same time.
But the most perplexing phenomenon in the bizarre world of the quantum is the effect
called entanglement. Two particles that may be very far apart, even millions or billions of
miles, are mysteriously linked together. Whatever happens to one of them immediately
causes a change in the other one1.
What I learned from Heisenbergs lecture thirty years ago was that we must let go of all our
preconceptions about the world derived from our experience and our senses, and instead let
mathematics lead the way. The electron lives in a different space from the one in which we
live. It lives in what mathematicians call a Hilbert space , and so do the other tiny particles
and photons. This Hilbert space, developed by mathematicians independently of physics,
seems to describe well the mysterious rules of the quantum worldrules that make no
sense when viewed with an eye trained by our every-day experiences. So the physicist
working with quantum systems relies on the mathematics to produce predictions of the
outcomes of experiments or phenomena, since this same physicist has no natural intuition
about what goes on inside an atom or a ray of light or a stream of particles. Quantum theory
taxes our very concept of what constitutes sciencefor we can never truly understand
the bizarre behavior of the very small. And it taxes our very idea of what constitutes reality.
What does reality mean in the context of the existence of entangled entities that act in
concert even while vast distances apart?
The beautiful mathematical theory of Hilbert space, abstract algebra, and probability
theoryour mathematical tools for handling quantum phenomenaallow us to predict the
results of experiments to a stunning level of accuracy; but they do not bring us an
understanding of the underlying processes. Understanding what really happens inside the
mysterious box constituting a quantum system may be beyond the powers of human beings.
According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics, we can only use the box to predict
outcomes. And these predictions are statistical in nature.