9 - Guiding fields in 3-space

Summary

In this chapter, we address proposals (by Einstein and by Bohr, Kramers and Slater) according to which quantum events are influenced by ‘guiding fields’ in 3-space. These ideas led to a predicted violation of energy-momentum conservation for single events, in contradiction with experiment. The contradiction was resolved only by the introduction of guiding fields in configuration space. All this took place before the fifth Solvay conference, but nevertheless forms an important background to some of the discussions that took place there.

Einstein's early attempts to formulate a dynamical theory of light quanta

Since the publication of his light-quantum hypothesis in 1905, Einstein had been engaged in a solitary struggle to construct a detailed theory of light quanta, and to understand the relationship between the quanta on the one hand and the electromagnetic field on the other. Einstein's efforts in this direction were never published. We know of them indirectly: they are mentioned in letters, and they are alluded to in Einstein's 1909 lecture in Salzburg. Einstein's published papers on light quanta continued for the most part in the same vein as his 1905 paper: using the theory of fluctuations to make deductions about the nature of radiation, without giving details of a substantial theory. Einstein was essentially alone in his dualistic view of light, in which localised energy fragments coexisted with extended waves, until the work of de Broglie in 1923 – which extended the dualism to all particles, and made considerable progress towards a real theory (see Chapter 2).