1304.1003 (H. Dieter Zeh)

The strange (hi)story of particles and waves    [PDF]

H. Dieter Zeh

Attempt of a non-technical but conceptually consistent presentation of the state of the art in quantum theory from a historical perspective. While its first part is written for a general readership, Sect. 4 may be provocative, in particular, to quantum field theorists. I argue that the wave functions of quantum mechanics, in contrast to the wave functionals of QFT, which represent the true quantum states, have to be interpreted as field modes and their combinations that are "occupied" (excited states of their corresponding quantum oscillators).

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1304.1003