An Experimental Test of the Trajectory Predictions of Bohmian Quantum Mechanics

Abstract

We propose an experimental time-of-flight test of the photon "trajectory" predictions of the Bohmian version of quantum mechanics. The photon trajectories in free space, as predicted by Bohmian mechanics, deviate from expected straight-line paths, bending and turning corners in the presence of quantum interference. We propose an experiment using two such corner-turns that should, in principle, allow these hypothetical Bohmian photons to arrive at a timing detector earlier than conventional photons traveling on the straight-line paths predicted by standard quantum mechanics.

We realized that proposed scheme would not actually test the Bohmian trajectory hypothesis because. while photons would switch paths, the detectable pulse would remain on the QM-predicted path