Quantum Mechanics: reality or an illusion of the detector? Paper I: Interference with non-interacting photons and a special type of detector

TL;DR

This paper proposes a classical particle model with a special detector that reproduces quantum interference patterns, suggesting quantum phenomena might emerge from classical trajectories and phase accumulation.

Contribution

It introduces a novel classical particle model with a unique detector mechanism that can replicate quantum interference effects.

Findings

Successfully reproduces double-slit interference pattern

Demonstrates classical particles can mimic quantum phase effects

Supports the idea that quantum behavior may emerge from classical processes

Abstract

We present a statistical model of non-interacting individual classical particles that may lead to a microscopic implementation of quantum mechanics. The model requires the action of a special type of detector that detects and records individual particles. According to our model, microscopic particles are classical entities that follow classical trajectories without nonlocal interactions between them. As long as they remain undetected, particles carry the information of a phase equal to an action integral along their trajectory. At the point of their detection, our special type of detector collects the phases from all particles reaching it, adds them up over time as complex numbers, and divides them by the square root of their number. The detector records a detection each time the square of the magnitude of the ensuing vector crosses an integer value. We test our model with numerical simulations of a double-slit experiment, and obtain an interference pattern analogous to the one observed in an actual physical experiment.