Towards a corpuscular model of optical phenomena

PhD ceremony: Mr. Fengping Jin, 16.15 uur, Academiegebouw, Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Title: Towards a corpuscular model of optical phenomena

Promotor(s): prof. H. de Raedt

Faculty: Mathematics and Natural sciences

This thesis presents a collection of event-by-event models that simulate fundamental optical experiments. The simulation approach is completely based on the experimental facts. Each component in the model corresponds to one kind of optical device, such as a beam splitter, a wave plate, a detector and so on. Networks of such components build computational experiments which are one-to-one copies of real experiments. As all components share the same mechanism (leaning machine) as in the previous work, our event-by-event simulation models are systematic and consistent with each other. As the model provides a description of interference and other wave phenomena on the level of individual event, it goes beyond the description of quantum theory. All the results presented in this thesis demonstrate that it is possible to simulate quantum phenomena by classical, non-Hamiltonian, local, causal and dynamical models.