On 7/1/2014 2:20 AM, Henry Baker wrote:
Brent> "But why not just decide, probabilistically, for each photon, where it will be absorbed?"
OK, I'm listening. How does this work, exactly?
You calculate the interference pattern and from that the probability at each point. You generate a random number and use the inverse of the cumulative probability with respect to position to assign an absorption point. But you knew that - so I'm not sure what you're asking?
Also, where is the parallelism?
I guess I don't understand the significance of parallelism. To make the calculation efficient? Once you've calculated the probability distribution you could easily parallelize the calculation of absorption points. Brent
At 10:47 PM 6/30/2014, meekerdb wrote:
On 6/30/2014 9:24 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
Cramer's "transactional" interpretation of QM is very computer sciencey, at least to my eyes.
Consider a thought experiment in which you're going to construct a parallel computer simulation of the double slit experiment, and you compute the probability density of photons at a uniform sampling of points in space.
The problem comes when you have to flip a probability-weighted coin at each point of the photon absorber in order to decide if a photon will be absorbed at that point. The problem is that you can't decide _locally_ and _independently_ at each absorbing point whether to absorb a photon at that point, because you have to guarantee the conservation of energy. The problem is that energy isn't just conserved _probabilistically_, but _exactly_, so if you choose badly, you can have more photons being absorbed than were emitted -- a clear violation of the conservation of energy. But why not just decide, probabilistically, for each photon, where it will be absorbed? That guarantees conservation of photon number.
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