Re: Nonlocality and morphogenesis

Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 22:48:25 -0800
From: Vasily Ogryzko <HVO@CU.NIH.GOV>
To: quantum-d@teleport.com
Subject: QUANTUM-D: Re: Nonlocality and morphogenesis

with reference to 
http://www.teleport.com/~rhett/quantum-d/posts/rhett_12-08.html

Rhett wrote:

> Among other things, i am asking this: how much spacial order
> can we buy with coherence?
> 
> From consideration of coherent states we know that nonlocal
> order certainly does arise in physical systems (despite proofs
> against nonlocal 'signalling').
> 
> What are the limits of this?

Is not the qm nonlocality underlying the stability of practically 
any condensed state of matter? Classical mechanics can not explain  
the stability of the simplest many-body systems (Earnshaw theorem), 
not to mention multi-particle objects, such as a prosaic crystal. 
(I am not talking here about the stability of the atoms of the 
crystal: one needs more than that to explain the long-range order 
in the crystalline state). The crystal reacts on the environmental 
challenge (thermal interaction with surroundings, for example) as 
a whole, the motions of its components (atoms or molecules etc) 
being correlated with each other; without these correlations there 
would be no stability, no preservation of form. In the case of 
thermal interaction, for example, these correlations render the 
internal dynamics of the crystal to be representable as the motion 
of phonons. However, since the phonon should be treated as an 
elementary particle, its coordinate can be completely delocalized 
over all the crystal lattice, due to the uncertainty principle. 
When the energy of this phonon is being converted, let us say, to 
a thermal photon energy upon the thermal exchange with its 
surrounding (or vice versa), this is a nonlocal process, the 
crystal lattice emits (or absorbs) this photon as a whole. I 
always took it as a demonstration that qm nonlocality should be 
involved in the explanation of stability of a crystal, and by the 
same token, of practically any other macroscopic object. However 
classical the dynamics of a stone in the external space is, its 
internal dynamics (internal degrees of freedom, phonon motion) is 
quantum and nonlocal.

Vasily Ogryzko.