# The Photon-Box Bohr-Einstein Debate Demythologized

## Abstract

The legendary discussion between Einstein and Bohr concerning the photon box experiment is critically analyzed. It is shown that Einstein’s argument is flawed and Bohr’s reply is wrong.

I. INTRODUCTION

The disagreement between Bohr and Einstein concerning quantum mechanics has become legendary in physics. One of their discussions, perhaps the one that has received most attention, is about the famous photon box experiment, a Gedankenexperiment devised by Einstein in order to show an apparent flaw in quantum mechanics: a violation of the time-energy indeterminacy relation. Bohr’s reply to it, constructed during a sleepless night after Einstein’s presentation, used the red shift formula, a result of general relativity. This discussion has been publicized as a crucial moment in the Bohr-Einstein debate. Bohr himself said that the “discussion took quite a dramatic turn”. Although some authors have criticized the validity of Bohr’s reply there is a general belief that the photon box experiment was the arena of a master fight between two giants (this view was also held by us). However, in this work we will see that this reputation is highly undeserved. Indeed a careful and irreverent study of the issue shows that Einstein’s argument is flawed and Bohr’s reply is wrong. There are some indications that neither Einstein nor Bohr were satisfied by their part in the discussion. Most probably Einstein noticed that Bohr’s reply was not conclusive; however he did not insist with his argument, probably because he did no longer believe in it. On the other hand, it is reported that Bohr had, on the day of his death, a drawing of the photon box in his blackboard. This could be thought to be a hunter’s trophy but it is also possible to interpret this as a sign that Bohr was not satisfied with his reply and was still looking for something better. The Bohr-Einstein discussion concerning the photon box has been treated by many authors, either criticizing or justifying and improving Bohr’s argumentation. To our knowledge, none of them makes a critical discussion of Einstein’s argument. This is probably due to the fact that his argument is extremely simple and apparently it requires no further comment. We will see however that his argument is seriously flawed, but not for the reasons given by Bohr.

Although the core of the discussion took place at the Solvay meeting in Brussels in 1930, we will take as an authorized source for the argument and the reply, Bohr’s account of them presented in his article published in 1949 in a book that has become a standard reference. Einstein read this article and had the opportunity (not used) to comment on these issues in the same volume.

In this work we will use the terms “indeterminacy” and “uncertainty” with different meaning. The first term, “indeterminacy”, denotes the impossibility of assigning precise values to the observables of a system as prescribed by quantum mechanics; whereas “uncertainty” will refer to the lack of precision in the knowledge of the value assigned to an observable due to apparatus or experimental limitations. According to this convention, Heisenberg’s relations refer to indeterminacies and not to uncertainties. Therefore, “uncertainty” will have in this work a classical origin and its nature is gnoseological whereas “indeterminacy” is essentially quantum-mechanical, regardless of whether its nature is ontological or gnoseological, an issue not decided among the experts in the foundations of quantum mechanics. In particular, referring to the indeterminacies either in space-time or in energy-momentum, two opposite points of view can been taken. In one of them it is claimed that the particles do have a precise localization in energy and momentum as well as in space and time, but quantum mechanics is unable to calculate or predict them simultaneously. This position implies that quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory. In the opposing view, quantum mechanics is a complete theory but the particles do not have the classical property of having exact values assigned to all observables.

II. EINSTEIN’S ARGUMENT

Einstein proposed to consider a box with perfectly reflecting walls containing electromagnetic radiation. Inside the box, an ideal clock mechanism could open a shutter at a predetermined moment $`T`$ for a time $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ short enough to let only one photon escape. Therefore since $`\mathrm{\Delta }T0`$, the time of emission of the photon can be, according to Einstein, exactly known. Before and after the emission, we could weigh the box at all leisure with unlimited precision and from the difference in weight we could exactly determine the energy $`E`$ of the photon. Therefore, argued Einstein, the escaping electromagnetic radiation violated the relation

$$\mathrm{\Delta }E\mathrm{\Delta }T\mathrm{},$$
(1)   
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ is the indeterminacy in the energy of the photon and $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ is the indeterminacy in the moment of emission. The meaning of the time energy relation has been a subject of profound analysis. The main difficulty with it is due to the fact that “time” is not a quantum mechanical observable and relation (1) can not be derived from a commutation relation as is done with position-momentum indeterminacy relations. For the purpose of this work we don’t need to worry about these difficulties because there are ways to derive time-energy indeterminacy relations that do not require the existence of a time operator. In any case, the violation of this relation, with the meaning given above would be fatal to quantum mechanics.

If Einstein’s argument were right, it would not only be fatal for the indeterminacy principle in quantum mechanics but it would also present an unsolvable contradiction between Einstein’s own concept of a photon and classical electrodynamics! Indeed, if the shutter is open during a vanishing time interval (for just one photon to escape, Einstein thought) then the electromagnetic pulse must be very sharp, ideally a Dirac delta. According to classical electrodynamics, the Fourier components of such a pulse involve a wide spectrum of frequencies. Therefore the electromagnetic pulse does not have a precisely defined frequency. On the other hand the unique escaping photon should have, according to Einstein, a precisely defined energy, that is, a precisely defined frequency ($`E=h\nu `$) in contradiction with the sharp pulse. At least in 1949, Einstein was well aware of this contradiction as he stated that “…indivisible point-like localized quanta of the energy $`h\nu `$ (and momentum $`h\nu /c`$)… contradicts Maxwell’s theory”. We know today that the photon concept is compatible with Maxwell’s theory provided that we abandon the simultaneous requirement of point-like localization and precise energy-momentum.

In order to appreciate Einstein’s argument and to understand its weakness it is useful to review the history of the photon as a quantum mechanical particle and its relation to a classical electromagnetic pulse. In the year 1905, when Einstein postulated its existence, the photon was not considered to be a particle but rather an indivisible “parcel of electromagnetic energy” involved in the interaction with matter. It was with the Compton effect, observed in 1923, that it became clear that the photon, in its collision with an electron, was exchanging energy and momentum, that is, individual particle properties. Only in 1926, when the photon was more than 20 years old, he was given his name. Today we may think of the photon as a full fledged quantum mechanical particle, like an electron or a neutrino, obeying typical indeterminacy relations. A photon can be prepared in a quantum state with precise energy and momentum at the cost of loosing space-time localization. On the other hand, a well localized photon escaping Einstein’s box through a shutter opened during a very short time, will have unsharp energy. We should notice however that sometimes in the bibliography the term “photon” has a more restrictive meaning, being reserved for the cases of quantum states prepared with sharp energy momentum (and therefore not localized). That is, those states generated by creation operators applied to the vacuum $`a_𝐤^{}|0`$. With appropriate superposition of these photon states of well defined energy, we can build states corresponding to any desired configuration of the electromagnetic fields. For instance, it can be shown that the, so called, coherent states correspond to a monochromatic linearly polarized plane electromagnetic wave. The quantum mechanical description of the electromagnetic field is a very rich subject that we will not treat here. For our purpose it is sufficient to mention that the space-time localization of the quantum state obtained as a superposition of photon states, is in correspondence with the space-time width of a classical electromagnetic pulse.

From the proposed experiment, it follows that Einstein was thinking of the photon as a sharply localized object with a sharply defined energy (frequency). Such an object does not exist! Einstein’s experiment can not be realized, not even in gedanke, because it involves a nonexistent object. Of course one can weigh the box before and after a short opening interval but the results of these measurements can not be attributed to a nonexistent physical system. Even if the “localized photon” did exist, the measurement performed on the box would perturb its state, as is today generally accepted, as consequence of the projection postulate; no matter how far away the photon is. Nonlocality is indeed the most astonishing aspect of the photon box experiment.

Einstein’s argument would be applicable when the physical system emitted by the box were a point like object with precisely defined energy, like a classical particle for instance. But then, the argument would be useless because it would not be surprising that a classical apparatus with a classical physical system violates quantum mechanics. Einstein needed the photon in his argument because of its essential quantum nature. His error was to assign, to this quantum mechanical object, classical features of localization and sharp energy. This is not possible as shown by the combination of classical electrodynamics with the definition of the photon energy.

II. BOHR’S REPLY

We have seen that the main weakness of Einstein’s argument lays in the “photon” side because it requires a nonexistent object. However Bohr looked for an error at another place: at the box side. The set of formulas used by Bohr in his reply to Einstein in order to derive the inequality (1) is:

$`\mathrm{\Delta }E=`$ $`\mathrm{\Delta }mc^2,`$ (2)   
$`\mathrm{\Delta }p\mathrm{\Delta }q`$ $`\mathrm{},`$ (3)   
$`\mathrm{\Delta }p<`$ $`Tg\mathrm{\Delta }m,`$ (4)   
$`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }T}{T}}=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{c^2}}g\mathrm{\Delta }q.`$ (5)   
This is a hybrid set involving classical mechanics (4), special relativity (2), quantum mechanics (3) and (4) and general relativity (5). We will see that this hybrid mixture is precisely the root of the weakness of the argument. Of course, with trivial manipulations of these formulas one can readily arrive at the inequality (1). However, in order to provide a proof of the inequality, the relations (2) to (5) must be valid and the symbols used in these formulas must have the same meaning as the one in the inequality (1). We will see that these two requirements are not satisfied by Bohr’s reply.

In Bohr’s reply to Einstein, $`T`$ is the “interval of balancing procedure”, $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ is the “weighing … accuracy”, $`\mathrm{\Delta }q`$ is the “position … accuracy” and $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ is the “minimum latitude in the control of the momentum of the box”. In these definitions there is a mixture of classical uncertainties and quantum indeterminacies. We agree with other authors that the symbol $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$ in Bohr’s arguments denotes some unspecified measure of width whose nature (classical or quantum) is not clearly stated. This ambiguity is typical of Bohr’s confusing argumentation style that was tolerated because of his (deserved) authority. For this reason his argument still “raises many questions which have never been satisfactorily answered”. The main difficulty in this task is that there is absolutely no unanimity as to the correct reading of Bohr’s argument. The number of different interpretations of the argument and of the meaning of the several symbols is astounding. In any case, the symbols involved in relation (1) are quantum indeterminacies and whatever meaning Bohr had in mind, sooner or later quantum indeterminacies must enter the scene in order to end with relation (1). We will therefore analyze Bohr’s argument assuming that he also refers to quantum indeterminacies. With this assumption we will show that Bohr’s argument is wrong.

The first difficulty that we find with Bohr’s argument is that the symbol $`T`$ has not the same meaning in the set of relations (2) to (5) as in relation (1). In Einstein’s argument, $`\mathrm{\Delta }T`$ is the indeterminacy in the moment of escape of the “photon” (more precisely, the time-width of the electromagnetic pulse) and in Bohr it means the indeterminacy in the balancing time of the box during the weighing procedure. These indeterminacies need not be the same. The weighing of the box can, indeed, be made a long time after the escape of the electromagnetic pulse. We have here sufficient reason to take Bohr’s reply as inconclusive.

The next difficulty is that Bohr claims that the inequality (4) is “obvious”. This was not obvious to us and therefore we made a bibliography search. Many authors simply quote Bohr literally without further explanation. Other authors attempt some explanations for it. In several cases an equality is derived instead of the inequality (4), involving classical uncertainties that are later replaced by quantum indeterminacies. None of the authors consulted stated clearly the difference between classical quantities causally related and essential quantum indeterminacies. We reached the conclusion that relation (4) is not obvious and, if valid, it must be proved with more care.

Since relation (4) has been attributed to be a consequence of the weighing procedure of the box in a spring balance, it is important to analyze it in every detail. The procedure consists in hanging or taking away increasingly smaller weights until the box remains at rest with the pointer at the zero of the scale. At this point the force of the spring cancels the total weight of the box and we can neglect them. There is one subtle point worth mentioning about the weighing procedure. In the light of the mass-energy relation, the weighing procedure must be such that there can not be any energy dissipation to the environment because this would imply a loss of mass. In particular, a damping mechanism to stop the box could not be tolerated. The weighing procedure must involve only transfer of elastic, gravitational and kinetic energy to stop the box without dissipation. We assume that the required experimental skills exist for this to be possible. When the balancing weights get smaller, the movement of the pointer becomes slower and longer balancing times are required. The weighing terminates with an experimental precision $`\delta m`$ when the addition or subtraction of such a mass would not produce any noticeable displacement of the pointer during a previously chosen balancing time $`T`$. If we are willing to spend more time we can reach better precision. Clearly, the box can not be at absolute rest but it will be moving with a momentum $`\delta p`$ that must be negligibly small, so small that during the time of balancing $`T`$, the displacement of the box $`\delta q`$ around the zero position should be smaller than any perceivable distance. The gravitational force $`g\delta m`$ associated to the mass $`\delta m`$, acting during the time $`T`$ would cause then a change $`\delta p`$ in the momentum of the box. That is,

$$\delta p=g\delta mT.$$
(6)   
We must emphasize the all quantities mentioned are classical uncertainties typical of any measurement procedure. The mass (energy) uncertainty $`\delta m`$ and the momentum uncertainty $`\delta p`$ are causally related by the equation above and can be estimated for a given experiment. They should not be confused with quantum indeterminacies that are in general not causally related. This equation is, formally, similar to Bohr’s relation (4) and we could be tempted to replace the uncertainties $`\delta p`$ and $`\delta m`$ by the corresponding indeterminacies $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ and somehow argue for the $`<`$ sign. We should resist the temptation leading to a wrong result, as we will see. More will be said below about this temptation. The closest that we can get relating the classical uncertainties with the quantum indeterminacies is to notice that the indeterminacies of the quantum state of the macroscopic apparatus are of course much smaller than the experimental uncertainties.

$$\mathrm{\Delta }p<\delta p;\mathrm{\Delta }m<\delta m.$$
(7)   
Clearly, Bohr’s relation (4) does not follow from relations (6) and (7) above. Even more, we will next see that there are quantum states of the box that violate relation (4).

An appropriate classical model for a spring balance could be a damped harmonic oscillator, if we can assume that the dissipated energy (mass) is negligible compared to the weighed mass. For our quantum case, however, the uncertainty in the measured mass must be very small and we can not tolerate energy losses; therefore we will take as a model for the box hanging from a spring in a constant gravitational field a (undamped) harmonic oscillator. The constant force of gravity is canceled by the spring and can therefore be ignored (it just amounts to an offset in the rest position of the box). The quantum state of the box will be given then by the harmonic oscillator energy eigenfunctions $`\{\varphi _n\}`$. We may assume that the preparation of the system, involved in the weighing procedure, leaves the box, including the enclosed radiation, in the energy ground state $`\varphi _0`$. This is the simplest assumption but we can be more general and choose for the state of the box some superposition of energy states with an energy indeterminacy $`\mathrm{\Delta }E`$ much smaller than the experimental uncertainty $`\delta mc^2`$. Among these choices we could consider the harmonic oscillator coherent states

$$\psi _\alpha =\underset{n=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}\mathrm{exp}(\frac{|\alpha |^2}{2})\frac{\alpha ^n}{\sqrt{n!}}\varphi _n.$$
(8)   
These states are particularly interesting because they are the quantum states that most resemble the classical states in the sense that they have the least indeterminacy product. Notice that $`\alpha `$ can take any (complex) value and the ground state corresponds to the special case where $`\alpha =0`$. The indeterminacies in momentum and energy for these states are,

$$\mathrm{\Delta }^2p=\mathrm{}m\omega /2,\mathrm{\Delta }^2E=\mathrm{}^2\omega ^2|\alpha |^2.$$
(9)   
Where $`m`$ is the mass of the oscillator (the box) and $`\omega `$ its oscillation frequency. The momentum indeterminacy is constant for all states and taking $`\alpha `$ small enough we can reach a state with an energy (mass) indeterminacy small enough to violate inequality (4), providing a counter example to Bohr’s “obvious” relation. That is,

$$|\alpha |<\frac{c^2}{Tg}\sqrt{\frac{m}{2\mathrm{}\omega }}\mathrm{\Delta }p>Tg\mathrm{\Delta }m.$$
(10)   
Regardless of the meaning that Bohr gave to the symbols, we can not use the set of relations (2) to (5), assuming that the $`\mathrm{\Delta }`$’s mean quantum indeterminacies, in order to derive relation (1) because one of them is wrong, as the counterexample shows. The last inequality above has the reversed sign compared with relation (4) and, if the rest of Bohr’s argument were correct, it would lead to a result like (1) but with the reversed sign! A boomerang for Bohr. With the harmonic oscillator model for the box, a rather decent model, we have shown that relation (4) is not generally true and presumably a model independent proof of the relation is impossible. In any case, it is far from being “obvious”.

Here we would like to emphasize that quantum indeterminacies can not be treated as classical variables because they are not causally related. An indeterminacy in momentum $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ is not a change in momentum that is caused by the action of some force. The indeterminacies are just that, indeterminacies without a classical cause. For this reason it would be wrong to place $`\mathrm{\Delta }m`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }p`$ instead of $`\delta m`$ and $`\delta p`$ in Eq.(6). It follows from the formal definition of the indeterminacies in quantum mechanics that when two observables $`A`$ and $`B`$ are related by a function, $`B=F(A)`$, their indeterminacies are not related by the same function (not even for a linear function with operator valued coefficients!). For example, energy and momentum of a free particle are related by $`E=p^2/2m`$ but their indeterminacies are not related in the same way. As another example, the position observables at different times ($`t`$ and $`0`$) for a free particle in a given quantum state, are related by $`x(t)=x(0)+vt`$, where $`v=p/m`$ is the velocity observable. However in this case the indeterminacies in the position at those times are related by

$$\mathrm{\Delta }x(t)=\sqrt{\mathrm{\Delta }^2x(0)+\left(xv+vx2xv\right)t+v^2t^2},$$
(11)   
where the expectation values are taken in the state at time $`t=0`$. It is therefore wrong to use Heisenberg indeterminacy relations in order to derive other relations by careless mathematical manipulations of the indeterminacies. This illegal use of Heisenberg relations has prompted D. Griffith to say: “when you hear a physicist invoke the uncertainty principle, keep a hand on your wallet”.

IV. CONCLUSION

When we differentiate the meaning and the mathematical treatment of the classical uncertainties and the quantum indeterminacies, it becomes clear that it is impossible to prove a quantum mechanical relation, like relation (1), by means of an argument concerning classical uncertainties. If this were possible, then, quantum mechanics would be a consequence of classical mechanics. On the other hand, we have just seen that hybrid arguments mixing classical and quantum concepts are often meaningless and may lead to wrong results. Therefore the only way to prove the validity of a quantum relation is to require logical consistency within the quantum theory (and, of course, agreement with the experiments). Every indeterminacy relation is a consequence of the formalism of quantum mechanics where states are represented by Hilbert space elements and observables by hermitian operators. Therefore any correct quantum mechanical treatment of the photon box experiment will be consistent with the indeterminacy relations.

Such treatments are not the purpose of this work but we just want to mention that they will involve the quantum description of the electromagnetic radiation inside and outside the box with states that are coupled by energy conservation. The description of the outgoing radiation can be conveniently done in terms of states built as superposition of photon number eigenstates. A well localized electromagnetic pulse will involve a large number of photon states, implying a large energy spread. On the other hand, if energy is sharp, the electromagnetic pulse will not be localized. Since the radiation inside and outside the box are coupled by energy conservation, the state reduction involved in the measurement of the energy inside the box will affect the state of the radiation outside the box, no matter how far away it is. Again, nonlocality appears as one of the most astonishing features of quantum mechanics.

In this work we have seen that the reputation of the Bohr-Einstein discussion concerning the photon-box experiment is not justified. Their arguments have been uncritically propagated by many authors. It is unfortunate that these, very deficient, arguments of Bohr and Einstein have been given such a high priority in their debate. Indeed, arguments that are meant to destroy quantum mechanics and the reply to save quantum mechanics from destruction should have a level of rigor not reached in the photon-box debate. Of course, the weakness in the arguments of Bohr and Einstein are easily detected today in the light of the present knowledge of quantum mechanics and it would be an anachronistic error to blame them for that. These weakness should by no means tarnish their fundamental contributions to quantum theory. On Bohr’s side, the idea of complementarity showing that physical reality has a level of sophistication veiled to our naive observations; and on Einstein’s side the EPR argument exhibiting unexpected correlations whose study have dominated the research on the foundations of quantum mechanics. Compared with their gigantic contributions, their errors are insignificant. The important mistake that we do want to point out is the uncritical and authoritarian propagation of a coherent combination of errors that lead to the right conclusion that quantum mechanics is correct.

This work has received partial support from “Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Argentina (PIP grant Nr. 4342/96). A.D. and I.G.M. would like to thank the “Comisión de Investigaciones Científicas” (CIC) for financial support.