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Yehonatan Knoll

Publications and source records attributed to Yehonatan Knoll.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
arXiv2024

Quantum mechanics as a solution to the classical self-force problem

It is argued that, contrary to conventional wisdom, no trustworthy universal self-force/radiative corrections to the Lorentz force equation, can be derived from the basic tenets of classical electrodynamics. This concords with the apparent randomness observed in quantum mechanical scattering experiments and with the absence of any experimental support for such universality. In a recent paper [11], the statistical effect of radiative corrections to the motion of charged bodies has been derived from the basic tenets and does take a universal form, described by quantum mechanical wave equations -- again conforming with experiment. As that derivation assumes nothing about the size, mass or composition of the body, it is conjectured that quantum mechanics is the appropriate framework for dealing also with radiative corrections to the motion of macroscopic bodies.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2021

No need for dark-matter, dark-energy or inflation, once ordinary matter is properly represented?

In a recent Foundations of Physics paper [5] by the current author it was shown that, when the self-force problem of classical electrodynamics is properly solved, it becomes a plausible ontology underlying the statistical description of quantum mechanics. In the current paper we extend this result, showing that ordinary matter, thus represented, possibly suffices in explaining the outstanding observations currently requiring for this task the contrived notions of dark-matter, dark-energy and inflation. The single mandatory `fix' to classical electrodynamics, demystifying both very small and very large scale physics, should be contrasted with other ad hoc solutions to either problems. Instrumental to our cosmological model is scale covariance (and `spontaneous breaking' thereof), a formal symmetry of classical electrodynamics treated on equal footing with its Poincare covariance, which is incompatible with the (absolute) metrical attributes of the GR metric tensor.

physics.gen-ph↗
arXiv2019

Quantum mechanics as a statistical description of classical electrodynamics

It is shown that quantum mechanics is a plausible statistical description of an ontology described by classical electrodynamics. The reason that no contradiction arises with various no-go theorems regarding the compatibility of QM with a classical ontology, can be traced to the fact that classical electrodynamics of interacting particles has never been given a consistent definition. Once this is done, our conjecture follows rather naturally, including a purely classical explanation of photon related phenomena. Our analysis entirely rests on the block-universe view entailed by relativity theory.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2013

Could quantum mechanics, and even gravity, be all about a correct resolution of the classical self-force problem?

The self-force problem of classical electrodynamics has two closely linked facets: The ill defined dynamics of a point charge due to the divergent self field at the position of the charge, and the divergence of formally conserved quantities, such as the energy, associated with symmetries of the corresponding Lagrangian. Fixing the self-force problem amounts to the construction of a \emph{new} theory, which is free of the above pathologies and yet "sufficiently close" to the immensely successful original. In a recent paper by the present author such a proposal, dubbed extended charge dynamics (ECD), was presented. The essential ingredients of classical electrodynamics preserved by ECD (and, among the plethora of solutions to the problem, only by ECD) are: - Ontology. The electromagnetic field is the same unquantized classical field, while charges are sufficiently localized conserved currents, accounting for the manifest corpuscular nature of elementary charges. - Symmetries. ECD enjoys the full symmetry group of classical electrodynamics, most importantly the hidden symmetry of scale covariance. - Conservation laws. All ECD conservation laws formally coincide with their classical counterparts, and yet lead to finite conserved quantities. Despite this seemingly classical setting, and the reduction of ECD to classical electrodynamics in the latter's domain of validity, it is shown in the present paper that ensembles of ECD solutions could, in principle, reproduce the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics. Exclusively quantum mechanical concepts, such as interference, violations of Bell's inequalities, spin and even photons (despite the use of a classical EM field), all emerge as mere statistical manifestations of the self interaction of ECD charges.

physics.gen-ph↗