Bonn 2025 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik
AGPhil 6: History and Philosophy of Physics
AGPhil 6.1: Vortrag
Mittwoch, 12. März 2025, 17:00–17:15, HS XVII
Louis de Broglie and the Five Dimensions; or, How Unified Field Theory Was Employed in the Quest for Realism in Quantum Mechanics — •Bernadette Lessel1 and Alessio Rocci2 — 1Philosophisches Institut, Universität Bonn — 2Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Louis de Broglie is most prominently known for his doctoral thesis from 1924 in which he introduced the notion of material waves. He is also known for belonging to the camp opposing the Copenhagen point of view on quantum mechanics, denying state space formalism and advocating a realist interpretation of the wave function until he gave it up in the year 1928. This talk explores de Broglie's use of ideas from classical field theories, particularly general relativity and unified field theory, in his quest for a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this regard, two distinct phases of de Broglie's work are identified: 1. The academic year 1926/27 - collaborating with young Léon Rosenfeld, de Broglie experimented with a five-dimensional formalism, similar to Kaluza and Klein's approach, to counter Schrödinger's notion of configuration space. 2. A later development starting in 1952 - utilizing the property of gravitational field singularities following geodesics, de Broglie incorporated concepts from general relativity into his 1927 theory of double solution. In this phase, de Broglie is assisted by French relativist Vigier. Central to their reasoning was the duality of particle and wave which they viewed as analogous to the particle-field duality in classical field theory.
Keywords: Foundations of Physics; History of Physics; Realism; Unified Field Theory