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I hope the editors of this subject will very carefully consider incorporating a new explanation of wavefunction evolution in the Stern-Gerlach experiment. It’s described in an article I published in an important peer-reviewed physics journal (Canadian Journal of Physics, 2015, 93(11): 1382-1390) not long ago. Recognizing the significance of that work, physicists at the University of Frankfurt invited me to speak about it at their Stern-Gerlach conference last September.

In that publication, I’ve described a remarkably simple proof which demonstrates that the silver atom’s initial spin-direction superposition is immediately reduced to a single spin eigenfunction when it gets a momentum kick from the magnet. That explanation, not yet included in the present Wikipedia article, does contradict what we read in most of our quantum textbooks. The proof is unequivocal and plain. The S-G magnetic field is static, implying a time-independent potential acting on the silver atom. So, Schrodinger’s equation becomes separable with one side of the equation dependent only on time, equal to the other side, which depends only on position. Thus, both sides must equal the same constant: total energy. Schrodinger’s continuous equation can describe the atomic wavefunction evolution only while the total energy is constant.

But, by design, there is no change in the atom’s longitudinal kinetic energy as it traverses the magnet. Likewise, there is no change in the atom’s potential energy, because the field is zero before and after the magnet. However, the transverse kinetic energy continually increases, in one direction, as the magnet transfers quanta to it. It’s seen at the detector screen as one, or the other, separated beam trace. So, the atom’s energy is not constant, and there must be immediate wavefunction reduction to one spin eigenfunction when a field quantum is absorbed.

The Stern-Gerlach experiment is our prototype for quantum measurement, and ought to be explained correctly. I’ve found that such a realistic description is a very potent test of some current, competing, quantum-measurement theories, including Quantum Darwinism, the Bohm-deBroglie depiction, and Kastner’s Transactional Interpretation.

Included in my article is the proposal for a very simple, practical experiment which would confirm its conclusion.

May I quote from Steven J. Gould’s book, “Ever Since Darwin”. Referring to certain inculcated teachings, he says: “As a trusting student I had assumed that such constant repetition must be firmly based on copious data. Later I discovered that textbook dogma is self-perpetuating;” (p. 85) And, still is.

I’m a PhD research physicist, now partly retired, who has become captivated by quantum measurement theory in recent years. This is my third publication on the subject. Originally, I did elementary particle experiments at the Los Alamos accelerator, then at the pion accelerator operated by theSwiss Technical University near Zurich.