Simulating quantum dynamics in terms of classical collective behavior

Abstract

A straightforward algorithm is proposed for simulating and visualizing nonrelativistic quantum dynamics in terms of the collective behavior of classical particles. In this approach, a quantum particle is treated as a swarm (collection) of its classical samples interacting with one another by simple rules involving the emission and absorption of associated photons. The quantum dynamics is regarded as resulting from the collective behavior of the swarm, and the eigenstates are treated as equilibrium states of the process of photon emission and absorption. Entanglement is seen as classical correlation between samples from distinct swarms; the information on this correlation is stored in a spatiotemporal section of the model inaccessible to the user. Amplitudes are invariably treated as consisting of amplitude quanta. A Coulomb field experienced by quantum particles is represented in a similar manner to the free spreading of a wave packet, by point interaction between the particle samples and the samples of scalar photons propagating by diffusion. This provides a square-root gam in computational speed against the direct method involving item-by-item examination. The approach presented covers decoherence and allows natural generalization to multiparticle quantum electrodynamics, the amount of memory required growing linearly.