Stephen L. Adler

Institute for Advanced Study, Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.

Submitted to “Quantum Nonlocality and Reality – 50 Years of Bell’s theorem”.

I briefly recall intersections of my research interests with those of John Bell. I then argue that the noise needed in theories of objective state vector reduction most likely comes from a fluctuating complex part in the classical spacetime metric, that is, state vector reduction is driven by complex number valued “spacetime foam”.

My research interests have intersected those of John Bell three times. The first was when I found the forward lepton theorem for high energy neutrino reactions, showing that for forward lepton kinematics, a conserved vector current (CVC) and partially conserved axial vector current (PCAC) imply that the neutrino cross section can be related to a pion scattering cross section [1]. This led to an exchange of letters and discussions with Bell during 1964-1965, which are described in the Commentaries for my selected papers [2]. The second was in the course of my work on the axial-vector anomaly [3], when I had further correspondence with John Bell, as described in both the Commentaries [4] and in the volume of essays on Yang-Mills theories assembled by ’t Hooft [5]. The third time was a few years after Bell’s death in 1990, when I became interested in the foundations of quantum theory and the quantum measurement problem, in the course of writing my book on quaternionic quantum mechanics [6]. Foundational issues in standard, complex quantum theory had preoccupied Bell for much of his career, and led to his best known work. However, my correspondence with Bell in the 1960s never touched on quantum foundations, and I only read his seminal writings on the subject much later on. In this article I focus on this third area of shared interests.

Full text of the article can be downloaded here.