Causal Physics: Photons by Non-Interactions of Waves

Book Preface

This is an unconventional book on optics that goes in depth behind the emergence of physical superposition effects (SE) as experienced by detectors, rather than assuming that the interference phenomenon is simply created by the mathematical superposition principle (SP), which gives the prescription of directly summing the wave amplitudes, even though no force of interaction between waves in the linear domain has ever been determined. This book underscores that explicit attempts to visualize the invisible realities behind the light–matter interaction processes, and will open up better understanding of all optical phenomena.

Effective use of this book will require complementing it with an existing, excellent senior-level textbook on optics or an equivalent background. Students, engineers, and scientists with strong inquiring minds will find this book inspiring as it will provoke them to ask many new questions. Professionals who are not experts in the field of optical sciences may find reading the book backward, starting with Chapter 12, more productive, as it provides a gist of the book, besides the evolution of our scientific thinking models.

The book demonstrates that our persistent attempts to restore causality in physical theories will be guided by our capability to visualize the invisible light–matter interaction processes that are behind the emergence of all measurable data in our instruments. Current theories emphasize modeling measurable data, rather than facilitating visualization of, or mapping, the ontological (actual) interaction processes going on in nature. Technology inventions require successful emulation of physical processes allowed by nature in novel ways, or in novel combinations, irrespective of our deficiencies in developing the complete or the final theory for any relevant phenomenon. Consider the fact that we humans have connected all the global countries into a Global Village and ushered in the Knowledge Age by inventing and implementing all the necessary technologies behind the radio wave, microwaves, and fiber-optic communication technologies. All the necessary technologies behind communication signals are handled by generating, manipulating, propagating, and detecting some combination of EM waves, electrons, and electric current. Yet, physicists will be forced to agree that we still really do not understand what photons and electrons are exactly, in spite of the best efforts by the best and brightest scientists over centuries. So, the primary thrust of this book is to draw closenattention to the invisible ontological interaction processes behind various optical phenomena so we can emulate them more efficiently and knowledgably in spite of limitations of our theories. Such an attempt immediately reveals that process-based understanding of superposition effects (SE) as experienced by detectors is dramatically different from the mathematical superposition principle (SP). The process behind SE consists of two interaction process steps, amplitude amplitude stimulation due to EM wave–dipole interaction followed by the quadratic energy exchange. SE is a physical phenomenon. SP is an interaction- free mathematical construct. The model turns out to be a logically correct first step once we recognize that wave amplitudes can cross-propagate and co-propagate through the same volume of a parent tension field, as they are just linear excitation states of the same tension field. The energy is still contained by the parent tension field; it is not carried by the excited wave-states. This is a profoundly important distinction from the prevailing explanation behind the appearance of measurable fringes on detectors.

Neither classical physics (CP) nor quantum mechanics (QM) has ever formally introduced any force of interaction between waves, yet the active roles of the detectors to generate the superposition effects have not been formally introduced in the theories. As a result, both CP and QM have continued to introduce a good number of ad hoc hypotheses to explain measured superposition effects in different contexts, including the unnecessary postulate of wave–particle duality.