The role of idealizations in the Aharonov–Bohm effect
The role of idealizations in the Aharonov–Bohm effect
复制标题
理想化在阿哈罗诺夫-玻姆效应中的作用
作者：
J. Earman
在科学理论化的标准描述中，理想化的作用是通过使用目标系统的简化表示来促进对某些现实世界系统的分析，这显然会引起人们对如何从不准确的描述中获得可靠知识的担忧。有人声称，Aharonov-Bohm （AB）效应中的理想化并不符合这一范式；相反，目标系统是一个虚构的系统，其特征虽然在物理上是可能的，但在现实世界中是无法实现的。研究这样一个虚构系统的目的是了解量子力学的基础，以及它的预测与经典力学的预测有何不同。最初对理想化使用的担忧被一种新的担忧所取代；也就是说，如果AB效应与一个虚构系统的行为有关，那么现实世界的实验怎么能证实它呢？在这个问题上的斗争有助于解释这样一个事实，即近三十年后才出现共识，即预测的AB效应得到了坚实的实验支持。理想化的标准描述吹捧它们在使目标系统的分析易于处理方面所起的作用；相比之下，AB效应中的理想化使其分析在概念上和数学上都具有挑战性。AB效应所需的理想化也导致了正则对易关系和当前代数的幺正不等价表示的存在，一个被限制在电子组态空间的观察者可以调用这些表示来“解释”AB型效应，而不需要假设一个隐藏的磁场。本文的目的是引起科学哲学家对AB效应的这些和其他方面的注意，这些方面在文献中被忽视或没有得到充分的处理。
On standard accounts of scientific theorizing, the role of idealizations is to facilitate the analysis of some real world system by employing a simplified representation of the target system, raising the obvious worry about how reliable knowledge can be obtained from inaccurate descriptions. The idealizations involved in the Aharonov–Bohm (AB) effect do not, it is claimed, fit this paradigm; rather the target system is a fictional system characterized by features that, though physically possible, are not realized in the actual world. The point of studying such a fictional system is to understand the foundations of quantum mechanics and how its predictions depart from those of classical mechanics. The original worry about the use of idealizations is replaced by a new one; namely, how can actual world experiments serve to confirm the AB effect if it concerns the behavior of a fictional system? Struggle with this issue helps to account for the fact that almost three decades elapsed before a consensus emerged that the predicted AB effect had received solid experimental support. Standard accounts of idealizations tout the role they play in making tractable the analysis of the target system; by contrast, the idealizations involved in the AB effect make its analysis both conceptually and mathematically challenging. The idealizations required for the AB effect are also responsible for the existence of unitarily inequivalent representations of the canonical commutation relations and of the current algebra, representations which an observer confined to the electron’s configuration space could invoke to ‘explain’ AB-type effect without the need to posit a hidden magnetic field. The goal of this paper is to bring to the attention of the philosophers of science these and other aspects of the AB effect which are neglected or inadequately treated in literature.