# What waves in a double slit experiment is the "hidden subquantic medium" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 11, 2015, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-waves-in-a-double-slit-experiment-is-the-hidden-subquantic-medium/734361 "2015-10-11T22:00:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 51
**Author:** ![Asympotically\_fat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e47c2d/32.png) [@Asympotically\_fat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asympotically_fat)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2015, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-waves-in-a-double-slit-experiment-is-the-hidden-subquantic-medium/734361/51 "2015-10-12T18:09:25Z")
This is a post from from the orginal thread that I had started to reply to. It seems to me there is a bit of a misunderstanding going on: > [@Richard Dawkins says American religion holds back science](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/richard-dawkins-says-american-religion-holds-back-science/733595/208): > > Yes, de Broglie agreed with Bohm in terms of the “subquantic medium”. However, Bohm considered the wave-function wave to be the pilot-wave. This is what de Broglie disagreed with when he said, _“to render impossible the adoption of the pilot-wave theory.”_ > > NON-LINEAR WAVE MECHANICS > A CAUSAL INTERPRETATION > by > LOUIS DE BROGLIE > > _"During the summer of 1951, there came to my attention, much to my surprise, a paper by David Bohm which appeared subsequently in The Physical Review [3]. In this paper Bohm went back to my theory of the pilot-wave, considering the W wave as a physical reality_ He made a certain number of interesting remarks on the subject, and in particular, he indicated the broad outline of a theory of measurement that seemed to answer the objections Pauli had made to my approach in 1927.3 My first reaction on reading Bohm’s work was to reiterate, in a communication to the Comptes rendus de VAcademic des Sciences [4], the objections, insurmountable in my opinion, that seemed to render impossible any attribution of physical reality to the W wave, and consequently, to render impossible the adoption of the pilot-wave theory."\* > > de Broglie says it is impossible to attribute physical reality to the wave-function wave. > > There are two waves in de Broglie’s double solution theory. There is the wave-function wave which is statistical, non-physical and is used to determine the probabilistic results of experiments. There is also a physical wave in the hidden subquantic medium which guides the particle. > > Bohmian mechanics: one wave. > > de Broglie’s double solution theory : two waves. One mathematical. One physial. You posted that quote earlier, but as I pointed out he must’ve changed his mind and posted a paper to show that point. The wavefunction is not a physical wave in any interpretation that I am aware of and certainly not in Bohmian mechanics. The problem with interpreting it as a wave is that the function in a classical wave equation describing a physical wave would be a real-valued function u(x,y,z,t), whereas the wavefunction of a two-particle system (for example) in position space is a complex-valued function Ψ(x[sub]1[/sub],x[sub]2[/sub],y[sub]1[/sub],y[sub]2[/sub],z[sub]1[/sub],z[sub]2[/sub],t), which looks nothing like something that could describe a physical wave. The physical wave in Bohmian mechanics is the pilot-wave, which is precisely the same wave that de Broglie talks about in his paper on [double-solution](http://aflb.ensmp.fr/AFLB-classiques/aflb124p001.pdf). Note he describes the same Hamilton-Jacobi equation and continuity equation as described [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave#Mathematical_formulation_for_a_single_particle). Similiarly the wavefunction can be derived from Bohmian mechanics, but importantly it is statistical in nature. I.e. “Double solution theory” is just de Broglie’s own term for de Broglie-Bohm theory. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-waves-in-a-double-slit-experiment-is-the-hidden-subquantic-medium/734361)._