Abstract
Modern high-stability lasers are extremely precise measuring instruments. It is not surprising that laser investigations often deal with the most essential problems of quantum theory. In the present paper, two close questions are discussed concerning laser physics: the reason for random photocounts in photodetectors under the action of high-coherence light and the reason for the smallness of quantum-mechanical wave packets of macroscopic bodies. Conventionally, these phenomena are explained on the basis ofa priori statistical (stochastic) approaches. The paper shows that such an explanation is internally contradictory in the context of modern laser measurements. It is also shown that these phenomena have natural explanations in terms of physics—the first, on the basis of the instability and stochastic character of electron plasma in electronic devices, and the second, on the basis of the gravitational self-focusing of wave packets for macroscopic bodies. Thus, it is shown thata priori statistical explanation of some phenomena is not physically justified, and by abandoning it one can get deep insight into them.
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Translated from a manuscript submitted December 19, 1996.
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Bykov, V.P. Laser investigations and quantum theory. J Russ Laser Res 18, 260–275 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02558704
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02558704