| dc.description.abstract | This thesis deals with the theoretical and experimental details of trying to understand
and infer the quantum potential from Bohmian mechanics using Bohmian trajectories. In
this work, some of the key components of the history of Bohmian mechanics is given, a
theoretical explanation of how to measure the Bohmian potential, followed by an overview
of the experimental apparatus and its components. Some tests of the experimental apparatus
are then presented followed by a discussion of the results. Lastly, some interesting
follow up experiments are de ned and discussed.
Bohmian mechanics, while completely agreeing with quantum mechanics could not be
more di erent from the standard notions such as the fact that particles retain their classical
identity of a point like object that have de nite and causal trajectories. In this realm, rst
developed by de Broglie, these particles move and are guided by a wave, which turns out
to be the wave function itself. Typically, the velocity of the particles anywhere in space
is given by spatial derivatives of the phase of this wave and the energy content of the
particles is given by the temporal derivative. The trajectories can bend even when there
are no outside (classical) forces that are acting on the objects. This is due to the fact that
these observations of Bohmian mechanics must conform to the standard measurements in
quantum mechanics.
One detail that has gone unmeasured (in the sense of inference) in a laboratory setting,
is the quantum potential (the mysterious force that moves particle to make sure they
reproduce the measurements of quantum mechanics). Using the technique of measuring
the trajectories of photons, the question was asked, can the quantum potential for single
photons in the double slit be inferred? A setup has been built in order to try and answer this
question using a single photon detecting camera and a heralding spontaneous parametric
down conversion source. Unfortunately, the quantum potential still goes unmeasured due
to noise in the camera pictures destroying the integrity of the signal and an interesting
problem of trying to stitch together the quantum potential at the varying z-planes. | en |
