It can take a bit of unpacking, but someone with some sort of college level physics and mathematics background can use Wikipedia to get a basic understanding of what they are talking about.
They are basically saying that the quantum mechanical 'strangeness' of light can be explained with classical, deterministic, physics. It is not necessary to have a separation in which quantum mechanics predominates at one level and trumps classical mechanics.
It call all be understood as movement of 'particles' of light (photons) on an underlying wave.
Their central claim is that they found a specific instance of quantum behavior where they can represent the whole model with only classical mechanics rather than falling back on quantum explanations like wavefunction collapse, etc. We think that describing quantum systems requires quantum explanations, so finding a counterexample could be interesting.
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It can take a bit of unpacking, but someone with some sort of college level physics and mathematics background can use Wikipedia to get a basic understanding of what they are talking about.
They are basically saying that the quantum mechanical 'strangeness' of light can be explained with classical, deterministic, physics. It is not necessary to have a separation in which quantum mechanics predominates at one level and trumps classical mechanics.
It call all be understood as movement of 'particles' of light (photons) on an underlying wave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_flux_quantum
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_flux
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_tube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_vortex
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_packet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell%27s_equations
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_equation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polarization_%28waves%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_test_experiments
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_dynamics
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory
Pilot wave theory has been known for decades. So can someone explain how whatever they're talking about is different/new?
Their central claim is that they found a specific instance of quantum behavior where they can represent the whole model with only classical mechanics rather than falling back on quantum explanations like wavefunction collapse, etc. We think that describing quantum systems requires quantum explanations, so finding a counterexample could be interesting.
So they claim that up until now pilot wave theory hasn't been able to explain entanglement while remaining consistent with Maxwell's equations.
They are not saying they came up with pilot wave theory, only that they've removed a sticking point.