We formulate Bohmian mechanics (BM) such that the main objects of concern are macroscopic phenomena, while microscopic particle trajectories only play an auxiliary role. Such a formulation makes it easy to understand why BM always makes the same meas
urable predictions as standard quantum mechanics (QM), irrespectively of the details of microscopic trajectories. Relativistic quantum field theory (QFT) is interpreted as an effective long-distance theory that at smaller distances must be replaced by some more fundamental theory. Analogy with condensed-matter physics suggests that this more fundamental theory could have a form of non-relativistic QM, offering a simple generic resolution of an apparent conflict between BM and relativistic QFT.
By entangling soft massless particles one can create an arbitrarily large amount of entanglement entropy that carries an arbitrarily small amount of energy. Dropping this entropy into the black hole (b.h.) one can increase the b.h. entropy by an amou
nt that violates Bekenstein bound or any other reasonable bound, leading to a version of b.h. information paradox that does not involve Hawking radiation. Among many proposed solutions of the standard b.h. information paradox with Hawking radiation, only a few can also resolve this version without the Hawking radiation. The assumption that bo
Contrary to the claim in a series of recent papers, we show that it cannot. A source of the error in those papers is misinterpretation of coordinate time as a physical time.
Most physicists do not have patience for reading long and obscure interpretation arguments and disputes. Hence, to attract attention of a wider physics community, in this paper various old and new aspects of quantum interpretations are explained in a
concise and simple (almost trivial) form. About the Copenhagen interpretation, we note that there are several differen
Zero-point energy is generally known to be unphysical. Casimir effect, however, is often presented as a counterexample, giving rise to a conceptual confusion. To resolve the confusion we study foundational aspects of Casimir effect at a qualitative l
evel, but also at a quantitative level within a simple toy model with only 3 degrees of freedom. In particular, we point out that Casimir vacuum is not a state without photons, and not a ground state for a Hamiltonian that can describe Casimir force. Instead, Casimir vacuum can be related to the photon vacuum by a non-trivial Bogoliubov transformation, and it is a ground state only for an effective Hamiltonian describing Casimir plates at a fixed distance. At the fundamental microscopic level, Casimir force is best viewed as a manifestation of van der Waals forces.
We present a simple general proof that Casimir force cannot originate from the vacuum energy of electromagnetic (EM) field. The full QED Hamiltonian consists of 3 terms: the pure electromagnetic term $H_{rm em}$, the pure matter term $H_{rm matt}$ an
d the interaction term $H_{rm int}$. The $H_{rm em}$-term commutes with all matter fields because it does not have any explicit dependence on matter fields. As a consequence, $H_{rm em}$ cannot generate any forces on matter. Since it is precisely this term that generates the vacuum energy of EM field, it follows that the vacuum energy does not generate the forces. The misleading statements in the literature that vacuum energy generates Casimir force can be boiled down to the fact that $H_{rm em}$ attains an implicit dependence on matter fields by the use of the equations of motion and the illegitimate treatment of the implicit dependence as if it was explicit. The true origin of the Casimir force is van der Waals force generated by $H_{rm int}$.
We propose a new non-holographic formulation of AdS/CFT correspondence, according to which quantum gravity on AdS and its dual non-gravitational field theory both live in the same number D of dimensions. The field theory, however, appears (D-1)-dimen
sional because the interactions do not propagate in one of the dimensions. The D-dimensional action for the field theory can be identified with the sum over (D-1)-dimensional actions with all possible values $Lambda$ of the UV cutoff, so that the extra hidden dimension can be identified with $Lambda$. Since there are no interactions in the extra dimension, most of the practical results of standard holographic AdS/CFT correspondence transcribe to non-holographic AdS/CFT without any changes. However, the implications on black-hole entropy change significantly. The maximal black-hole entropy now scales with volume, while the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy is interpreted as the minimal possible black-hole entropy. In this way, the non-holographic AdS/CFT correspondence offers a simple resolution of the black-hole information paradox, consistent with a recently proposed gravitational crystal.
