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# 1 Introduction

## 1 Introduction

Confinement of color in QCD implies that the color field of external quarks is squeezed into a tube connecting the quarks (provided that the distance between the quarks is large enough). Similarly, the ordinary magnetic field cannot penetrate superconductors and the dual superconductor model of confinement  makes this analogy manifest. The model assumes condensation of magnetic monopoles in QCD, similar to the condensation of charged Cooper pairs in superconductor. The monopole confinement mechanism is confirmed in $`SU(2)`$ lattice gauge theory by many numerical calculations, for a recent review see, e.g., . Microscopically, the condensation of the monopoles can be understood as percolation of a monopole cluster. And, indeed, it was observed that there exists always a big percolating cluster which is responsible for confinement . Since the percolating cluster may seemingly have any size we will call it infrared (IR). On the other hand, there are also many small, or ultraviolet (UV) clusters which are usually viewed as lattice artifacts .

Although there is a lot of data on the lattice monopole the understanding of the monopole dynamics in terms of the continuum theory is far from being complete at the moment. Qualitatively, there are two ways of looking at the monopoles in non-Abelian theories. First, one can think in terms of an analogy with the ’t Hooft-Polyakov monopoles  which are classical solutions to the Yang-Mills equations with a triplet of matter fields. However, there are no matter fields in QCD. As a result, one rather changes the strategy of defining the monopoles . Namely, they can be defined as purely topological defects, with no direct relation to the density of the non-Abelian action. According to the original idea of Ref.  in case of $`SU(2)`$ gauge group one can choose any vector in color space and (partially) fix the gauge by rotating the vector to the third direction. Such gauge fixing fails when all the components of the vector vanish at some point. The crucial observation is that vanishing of a vector gives three conditions which in the D=4 case define line-like defects, that is the monopole trajectories. The success of the monopole confinement model depends in fact on the particular choice of the gauge. The observation might imply that a purely topological definition, devoid of any dynamic content is not in fact adequate. The so called maximal Abelian gauge and the corresponding projection  turns out to be the most carefully studied and very successful. Since the Abelian projection emphasizes the role of the Abelian-like field configurations this might be an indication that at large distances the lattice monopoles are similar to the Abelian or Dirac monopoles.

To get insight into the dynamics of the lattice monopoles we will concentrate here on measuring the full non-Abelian and Abelian actions at the centers of the monopoles. Actually, this kind of measurements have been reported earlier . Namely, it was shown that the non-Abelian action on the plaquettes close to the monopole trajectory is larger than the average plaquette action, $`S`$. It is easy to realize, however, that if this were true at arbitrary small distances the monopoles would be strongly suppressed by the action factor and could not condense, see, e.g., . In this note we report on the measurements which demonstrate for the first time that the above mentioned excess of the action goes down for smaller lattice spacing, or larger $`\beta `$. A crucial novel point is that we distinguish between the monopoles belonging to the UV and IR clusters and the statement on the decreasing of the action refers to the IR monopoles only. In this sense, the structure of the IR and UV monopoles turns out to be different and one can say that the monopoles in the IR clusters are condensed due to their special anatomy.

The separation of the monopole ensemble on IR and UV clusters is unambiguous for large enough lattices. The distribution of the cluster lengths clearly shows  that each monopole configuration contains typically one large IR cluster and a lot of small UV clusters separated by clearly observed gap. Thus we do not need to introduce any artificial mass scale to distinguish between IR and UV clusters.

The most important question to be addressed here is the estimation of the size of the monopoles. Our definition of the monopole size will be described in Sect. 3 As we shall see, the size of the monopole turns out to be rather small numerically. This observation supports speculations on the existence of a numerically large mass scale in the non-perturbative physics, see, e.g.,  and references therein. On the other hand our results show that the size of the Abelian monopoles is much smaller than the distance between the monopoles. Thus the monopole cores are not overlapping and the system can be tractable as a dilute gas.

In the next section we will summarize the current views on the anatomy of the monopoles. In section 3 we present our data and discuss their implications. It occurs that due to the finite size the monopoles in gluodynamics are condensed at any value of the bare coupling. In compact QED, on the other hand, where monopoles are point-like, the critical coupling, separating confinement and deconfinement phases, exists.

## 2 Monopoles on the lattice and in the continuum

Let us first remind the reader the backbone of the theory of the monopole condensation in the compact photodynamics . In this case the monopoles are classical solutions, the same as the original monopoles of Dirac . The radial magnetic field of the monopole is similar to the electric field of a point-like charge, $`|𝐇|1/e^2r^2`$ where $`e`$ is the electric charge and the factor $`1/e^2`$ appears because of the Dirac quantization condition. The corresponding energy is ultraviolet divergent:

$`ϵ_{mon}{\displaystyle d^3x𝐇^2}{\displaystyle \frac{1}{e^2a}},`$ (1)
where $`𝐇`$ is the magnetic field, $`a`$ is the lattice spacing which provides an ultraviolet cut off. Note that the Dirac string does not contribute to the energy (1) because of the compactness of the $`U(1)`$. Otherwise it would result in a quadratically divergent term (for further details and references see ). Eq. (1) implies that the probability to find a monopole trajectory of length $`L`$ is suppressed by the action as $`\mathrm{exp}\{constL/(e^2a)\}`$. This suppression can be overcome, however, for $`e^21`$ by the entropy factor. Indeed, on the hypercubic lattice the number $`N`$ of trajectories of the length $`L`$ grows exponentially, $`N\mathrm{exp}(\mathrm{ln}7L/a)`$ where the constant $`\mathrm{ln}7`$ is of pure geometrical origin. Since the self-energy (1) can be found with all the coefficients fixed the equating of the entropy and action factors provides a quantitative means to find the value of $`e_{crit}^2`$. A detailed quantitative analysis along these lines as well as further references can be found in .

In case of the gluodynamics, we choose the maximal Abelian gauge which is defined through maximization of the functional $`R[U]=_lTr[\sigma _3U_l^+\sigma _3U_l]`$ over all gauge transformations $`U_l^\mathrm{\Omega }=\mathrm{\Omega }^+U_l\mathrm{\Omega }`$. Moreover, in the standard parameterization of the link matrix

$`U_l=\left(\begin{array}{cc}\mathrm{cos}\phi _le^{i\theta _l}& \mathrm{sin}\phi _le^{i\chi _l}\\ \mathrm{sin}\phi _le^{i\chi _l}& \mathrm{cos}\phi _le^{i\theta _l}\end{array}\right),`$ (2)
$`\theta ,\chi [\pi ,+\pi )`$, $`\phi [0,\pi )`$, the functional $`R`$ can be rewritten as: $`R[U]=_l\mathrm{cos}2\phi _l`$.

Thus, the maximization of $`R`$ corresponds to the maximization of the absolute values of the diagonal elements of the link matrix (2). Since the $`SU(2)`$ plaquette action is $`\beta \frac{1}{2}TrU_P`$, at large values of $`\beta `$ the link matrices are close to unit matrix up to gauge transformations. Thus, at large values of $`\beta `$ in the maximal Abelian gauge $`\mathrm{cos}\phi _l`$ are close to unity, the angles $`\phi _l`$ are small and the $`SU(2)`$ plaquette action has the form:

$`\beta S=\beta \left[\mathrm{cos}\theta _P{\displaystyle \underset{i=1}{\overset{4}{}}}\mathrm{cos}\phi _i+O(\mathrm{sin}\phi _l)\right].`$ (3)
The projected action $`S^{Abel}`$ is defined by putting $`\phi _l=0`$. In the form (3) the projected action closely resembles the action of the compact electrodynamics111Here we neglect complications due to Faddeev-Popov determinant.:

$`\beta _{U(1)}S_{cQED}=\beta _{U(1)}\mathrm{cos}\theta _P.`$ (4)
However, if we would try to transfer the picture with Abelian monopoles directly onto the non-Abelian case, the conclusion would be that there is no monopole condensation in gluodynamics. Indeed, because of the asymptotic freedom $`g^2(a)0`$ if $`a0`$. Thus, one substantiates the dual superconductor model of the confinement with dynamical considerations like the following. Let us start increasing the lattice spacing a la Wilson. Then the corresponding effective coupling $`g^2`$ grows according to the renormgroup equations. The same coupling governs any of the $`U(1)`$ subgroups and once $`g^2`$ reaches the value where the $`U(1)`$ monopoles condense (see above) the condensation occurs in the non-Abelian theory as well. In this way one readily understands that there exists one monopole per volume of order $`(\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD})^3`$ so that the monopoles survive in the continuum limit. However, since the running of the coupling is a pure quantum effect there is no much hope to explicitly match a quasi-classical, Abelian-like field configuration at large distances with perturbative-vacuum fluctuations at short distances.

Instead, we can think in terms of a phenomenological expansion of the action density inside the monopoles. Since the action density is measured in lattice units it is convenient to consider an expansion of the form:

$`\left(|F_{\mu \nu }^a|_{\mathrm{monopole}\mathrm{center}}^2|F_{\mu \nu }^a|_{\mathrm{average}}^2\right)=`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{g^2(a)a^4}}\left({\displaystyle \underset{k=0}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}c_kg^{2k}(a^2)+{\displaystyle \underset{n=1}{\overset{\mathrm{}}{}}}b_na^n\right)`$ (5)
Then the theoretical expectation is that all the ultraviolet divergent pieces vanish, $`c_k=0`$. Indeed, otherwise we would have point-like objects beyond the ordinary gluons, in direct contradiction with the asymptotic freedom. Thus, only terms of order $`\mathrm{exp}(const/g^2(a))`$ or powers of $`a`$ are allowed in the r.h.s. of Eq. (2). Moreover, we expect that the series actually starts with the $`a^4`$ term. Indeed, the monopole field is of order $`(F_{\mu \nu }^a)_{mon}\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}^2`$ as discussed above. The perturbative fields, on the other hand, are of order $`a^2`$. However, there is no reason to expect any interference between the perturbative and monopole contributions, at least upon the averaging. Thus the excess of the action near the monopoles is to vanish proportional to $`a^4`$ if measured in the lattice units.

The prediction of the $`a^4`$ behavior holds in the academic limit $`a0`$. It is a different matter of course how close to this limit the existing lattices are. In the next section we will present first indications that the excess, as measured in the lattice units, decreases with the decreasing lattice size. However, it is too early to claim that the excess is vanishing fast at $`a0`$. In this sense the measurements presented in this paper can be considered as a first step in studying the monopole anatomy.

## 3 Numerical results

We have performed measurements of the full non-Abelian action, $`S_{mon}^{SU(2)}`$, on the plaquettes closest to the monopole trajectory. The simulations have been done using Wilson action on lattices $`12^4`$ for $`\beta =2.27,\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.3},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.33},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.35},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.38},\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}2.4}`$, $`16^4`$ for $`\beta =2.45`$, $`20^4`$ for $`\beta =2.5,2.55`$ and $`28^4`$ for $`\beta =2.6`$. We thus kept our physical volume $`1.5fm`$. We made $`20`$ measurements on $`12^4`$ and $`20^4`$ lattices, $`15`$ measurements on $`16^4`$ lattice and $`20`$ measurements on $`28^4`$ lattice. The full non-Abelian action, $`S_{mon}^{SU(2)}`$, on the plaquettes closest to the monopole trajectory have been measured. The error analysis has been carried out with bootstrap and jackknife methods. Both methods gave consistent estimates for statistical errors.

To fix MA gauge the simulated annealing (SA) algorithm was employed. It is known that this algorithm is vital for reducing the uncertainty due to Gribov copy effects in the gauge non-invariant observables computed in MA gauge . Our SA algorithm implementation is essentially the same as described in  with the exception that we increased the total number of SA sweeps up to 2000. To further reduce bias due to Gribov copies we made gauge fixing for 5 randomly generated gauge copies for every Monte Carlo configuration. Only the copy with the maximal value of the gauge fixing functional $`R[U]`$ has been used to compute our observables. To estimate the residual effect of the Gribov copies we compared results obtained with different numbers of gauge copies $`N_{cop}`$ in the range from 1 to 5. We have found systematic albeit weak dependence of our observables on the number of gauge copies. The difference between results obtained with $`N_{cop}=1`$ and $`N_{cop}=5`$ was less than our statistical errors. At the same time the difference from results obtained with the iterative gauge fixing algorithm was an order of magnitude larger than statistical errors.

While measuring $`S_{mon}`$ on the plaquettes closest to the monopole trajectory, we discriminate between the monopoles belonging to the IR and UV clusters. Our lattices are of the physical size $`1.5fm`$ , i.e. large enough for most of observables. On the other hand it has been found out in  that essentially larger volume is necessary to have only one large IR cluster. Some of our lattices are not large enough and we find on them not one but a few large clusters. We believe that combining all these clusters one gets the set of infrared monopoles. This conjecture has been confirmed recently . In the present work we considered only monopoles from the largest cluster as IR monopoles. This introduces some systematic uncertainty into results for UV clusters, namely the corresponding non-Abelian action is underestimated. At the same time this uncertainty does not influence our main conclusions.

In Fig. 1 we show the dependence of $`\overline{S}=6\beta S_{mon}S`$ on the half of the lattice spacing222To define the lattice distance in Fermi, we find the correspondence between the bare charge and lattice spacing by fixing the value of the string tension $`\sigma =440\text{MeV}`$ and using the numerical data for the string tension in lattice units, $`\sigma a^2`$, see ., $`a/2`$. The factor $`6\beta `$ is introduced here to make convenient the comparison of the action and the entropy factors. The explanation of the scale of the horizontal axis, i.e. $`a/2`$, is the following. Since $`S_{mon}`$ is measured on the plaquettes which are faces of the cube dual to the monopole current, this corresponds to measuring the average field strength at the distance $`a/2`$ from the monopole center. Note that the excess of the action is dominated by the closest plaquettes. In this figure we compare the action on the plaquettes nearest to the monopole center with the $`\mathrm{ln}7`$. As is mentioned in Sect. 2, the $`\mathrm{ln}7`$ is a geometrical constant determining the monopole entropy. The action in the lattice units for the percolating monopoles should not exceed $`\mathrm{ln}7`$, see, e.g.,  and references therein.

Our main observation is that $`\overline{S}`$ for the monopole belonging to the IR cluster decreases when we approach the monopole center. Moreover, it is below $`\mathrm{ln}7`$ for all data in agreement with percolation condition discussed above. On the other hand, the action for the UV monopoles is increasing and exceeds $`\mathrm{ln}7`$ in agreement with the fact that these clusters are not percolating. Thus for the first time we demonstrate by direct computation of the action density that the percolation condition works in $`SU(2)`$ gluodynamics: percolating monopoles carry action density (in lattice units) less than $`\mathrm{ln}7`$, while for non-percolating monopoles the action density is above this value. Note, that the excess of the action near all monopoles behaves similarly to the leading term in the monopole action . This term is proportional to the length of the monopole trajectory.

The action density distribution on Fig. 1 has the same physical meaning as the action profile of the ’t Hooft–Polyakov monopole classical solution . However the monopoles studied in the present Letter are of a purely quantum origin.

The results of the calculation of the Abelian action near the monopole, $`\overline{S}^{Abel}=6\beta S_{mon}^{Abel}S^{Abel}`$, are presented in Fig. 2. Unlike the full non-Abelian action, the Abelian action associated with the monopoles, $`\overline{S}^{Abel}`$, for monopoles belonging to IR and UV clusters is approximately the same. Moreover, it increases when one approaches the center of monopole. There is no known explanation of this effect. A comparison of Figs. 1 and 2 shows that the role of the off–diagonal degrees of freedom seem to compensate the divergent contribution into the monopole energy from the Abelian part of the gluon fields. Thus the monopoles in the maximal Abelian projection look like ’t Hooft – Polyakov monopoles which are not singular at the origin. Note that the monopoles in compact QED are singular Dirac monopoles.

Now we discuss the size of the IR monopole. It occurs that the fit of the data in Fig. 1 by the function $`C_0+C_1\mathrm{exp}\{R^2/(R^{mon})^2\},R=a/2`$, can be performed with high quality, $`\chi ^2/N_{DOF}=0.26`$. The values of fit parameters are: $`C_0=1.706(5)`$, $`C_1=0.63(2)`$, $`R^{mon}=0.041(1)fm`$. This fit is shown in Fig. 1 by solid line. Thus our estimation for the monopole radius is $`R^{mon}0.04fm`$. Of course the definition of the monopole radius is not unique, but we believe that all reasonable definitions give the monopole radius of the same order. Note that in Ref.  it was found that the monopole condensation starts for monopoles approximately of the same physical size as $`R^{mon}`$ determined in the present paper. Up to now we did not study the scaling behaviour of the monopole radius. Such calculations are possible if we surround monopoles by cubes of various size and we measure the action on the faces of these cubes. This study is now in progress.

Our data give support to the following picture. At the large enough distances from the monopoles gauge field is Abelian-like and approximation eq. (3) works well. At short distances the non-Abelian nature of the monopoles is manifest and while the Abelian part of the action grows up the total action decreases.

To summarize, we have shown that the phenomenon of the monopole condensation in the lattice gluodynamics is due to a special anatomy of the monopoles belonging to the IR cluster. On the other hand, in the limit $`a0`$ one would expect much faster vanishing of the excess of the action than it was observed so far. Since the theoretical prediction on the vanishing of the excess of the action at small $`a`$ seems very reliable (see the preceding section) the results obtained are to be rather interpreted in terms of various scales of the non-perturbative physics. Indeed, the average distance between nearest monopoles in the IR cluster is about $`0.5fm`$, as can be extracted from the data in Refs. . Now we observe for the first time that the excess of the action goes down when we approach the monopole center. The corresponding radius turns out to be small numerically333Note that this implies that monopoles form a gas rather than a liquid since the monopole cores are most probably not interacting due to the separation of scales., $`R^{mon}0.04fm`$. Moreover, even a smaller scale might emerge in future. Indeed, in the limit $`a0`$ we should have the $`a^4`$ behavior for the excess of the action which is not yet in sight at present. Thus, there appears a hierarchy of scales all of which are formally of the same order, $`\mathrm{\Lambda }_{QCD}`$. Note that existence of such hierarchies has already been conjectured on various grounds. First, a great variety of scales is manifested through QCD sum rules . Further evidence has been accumulated via various lattice measurements, see  and references therein. In particular, very recently the relevance of the scale of order $`2\mathrm{GeV}`$ was revealed through the measurements of the $`A^2`$ vacuum condensate. This scale would roughly correspond to the monopole radius $`R^{mon}0.04fm`$ which we are observing.

## Acknowledgments

M.I.P. and A.I.V. acknowledge the kind hospitality of the staff of the Institute for Theoretical Physics of Kanazawa University, where the work was initiated. Work of V.G.B., M.N.C., F.V.G., M.I.P. and A.I.V. was partially supported by grants RFBR 02-02-17308, RFBR 01-02-17456, INTAS 00-00111, JSPS Grant in Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Grant No. 10440073 and No. 11695029) and CRDF award RP1-2364-MO-02.


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# Event-by-event fluctuations and the QGP

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Any physical quantity measured in experiment is subject to fluctuations. In general, these fluctuations depend on the properties of the system under study (in the case at hand, on the properties of a fireball created in a heavy ion collision) and may contain important information about the system.

The original motivation for event-by-event (E-by-E ) studies in ultra relativistic heavy ion collisions has been to find indications for distinct event classes. In particular it was hoped that one would find events which would carry the signature of the Quark Gluon Plasma. First pioneering experiments in this direction have been carried out by the NA49 collaboration . They analysed the E-by-E fluctuations of the mean transverse momentum as well as the kaon to pion ratio (see Fig. (1)). Both observables, however, did not show any indication for two or more distinct event classes. Moreover, the observed fluctuations in both cases were consistent with pure statistical fluctuations.

On the theoretical side, the subject of E-by-E fluctuations has recently gained considerable interest. Several methods to distinguish between statistical and dynamic fluctuations have been devised . Furthermore the influence of hadronic resonances and possible phase transitions has been investigated . All these theoretical considerations assume that the observed fluctuations will be Gaussian and thus the physics information will be in the width of the Gaussian. In  one of us has shown, that in this case, the information contained in E-by-E fluctuations is that of a two particle density, which can alternatively be measured using a two arm spectrometer. This observation implies that possibly interesting fluctuations can be observed and verified by a whole array of detectors not only large acceptance ones.

## 2 Event-by-event fluctuations

Fluctuations have contributions of different nature. First there are the ‘trivial’ statistical fluctuations due to a finite number of particles used to define a particular observable in a given event. Second there are dynamical fluctuations. Those carry the information about the properties of the system. In the special case of heavy ion collisions, there is another source of ‘trivial’ fluctuations, namely the fluctuations of the volume. All these fluctuations contribute to E-by-E fluctuations. The obvious challenge, therefore, is to separate the ‘trivial’ from the interesting components.

### 2.1 Fluctuations in thermal systems

In a thermal system, the fluctuations of a quantity are proportional to its susceptibility, which is the second derivative of the appropriate free energy with respect to the conjugate variable. For example the fluctuations of the charge are given by

$`\delta Q=T{\displaystyle \frac{^2F}{\mu _Q^2}}=VT\chi _Q`$ (1)
where $`\mu _Q`$ is the charge chemical potential, $`T`$ the temperature and $`V`$ the volume of the system. $`\chi _Q`$ is the charge susceptibility. Here we will mostly concentrate on the charge fluctuations. Therefore, let us discuss the charge susceptibility in some more detail. First, as shown in , the charge susceptibility is directly related to the electric screening mass in a system. Furthermore, it is given by the zero momentum limit of the static current-current correlation function

$`\chi _Q=\mathrm{\Pi }_{00}(\omega =0,k0)`$ (2)
which can be, and has been, evaluated in Lattice QCD  as well as in effective hadronic models .

### 2.2 Fluctuations in Heavy Ion Collisions

The systems created in a heavy ion collisions carry another important, but rather uninteresting source of fluctuations namely the fluctuations of the volume. Even for the tightest centrality selection the impact parameter and thus the volume of the system still fluctuates considerably. These volume fluctuations may even dominate. For example let us consider the fluctuation of the number of particles of a certain species. In a given event the number of particles is given by

$`N=\rho V`$ (3)
where $`\rho `$ is the particle density and $`V`$ the volume of the system created in this event. Thus the fluctuations have contributions from both the density fluctuations and the fluctuations of the volume

$`(\delta N)^2=(\delta \rho )^2V^2+\rho ^2(\delta V)^2.`$ (4)
The interesting physics of course resides in the fluctuations of the density. Consequently, one needs to consider so called ‘intensive’ quantities, which do no explicitely depend on the volume. One such observable is the ratio of particle abundances, and this is what we will concentrate on here.

### 2.3 Fluctuations of particle ratios

As discussed in the previous section, the fluctuations of particle ratios should be independent of volume fluctuations. This is certainly true if one looks at similar particles such as $`\pi ^+`$ and $`\pi ^{}`$, where the freeze out volumes are expected to be the same. Some residual volume fluctuations may be present if one considers ratios of particles with different quantum numbers such as the $`K/\pi `$ ratio, but they still should be small. Let us define the particle ratio $`R_{12}`$ of two particle species $`N_1`$ and $`N_2`$

$`R_{12}={\displaystyle \frac{N_1}{N_2}}`$ (5)
The fluctuations of this ratio are then given by

$`{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta R_{12})^2}{R_{12}^2}}`$ $`=`$ $`\left({\displaystyle \frac{(\delta N_1)^2}{N_1^2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{(\delta N_1)^2}{N_2^2}}2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta N_1\delta N_2}{N_1N_2}}\right).`$ (6)
The last term in Eq. (6) takes into account correlations between the particles of type 1 and type 2. This term will be important if both particle types originate from the decay of one and the same resonance. For example, in case of the $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$ratio, the $`\rho _0`$, $`\omega `$ etc. contribute to these correlations. Also this term is responsible to cancel out all volume fluctuations .

Let us note that the effect of the correlations introduced by the resonances should be most visible when $`N_1N_2`$. On the other hand, when $`N_2N_1`$, as in the $`K`$ to $`\pi `$ ratio, the fluctuation is dominated by the less abundant particle type and the resonances feeding into it. The correlations are then very hard to extract. In  it was shown that in case of the $`K/\pi `$-ratio resonances and quantum statistics give rise to deviations from the statistical value of at most 2 %, in agreement with experiment .

As pointed out in  the measurement of particle ratio fluctuations can provide important information about the abundance of resonances at chemical freeze out, and thus provides a crucial test for the picture emerging from the systematics of single particle yields . In particular the fluctuations of the $`\pi ^+/\pi ^{}`$-ratio should be reduced by about 30 % as compared to pure statistics due to the presence of hadronic resonances with decay channels into a $`\pi ^+`$-$`\pi ^{}`$-pair at chemical freeze out. About 50 % of the correlations originate from the decay of the $`\rho _0`$ and the $`\omega `$ mesons. Thus the fluctuations provide a complementary measurement to the dileptons.

## 3 Charge fluctuations

Measuring the charge fluctuations or more precisely the charge fluctuations per unit degree of freedom of the system created in a heavy ion collision would tell us immediately if we have created a system of quarks and gluons  (see also ). The point is that in the QGP phase, the unit of charge is $`1/3`$ while in the hadronic phase, the unit of charge is 1. The net charge, of course does not depend on such subtleties, but the fluctuation in the net charge depends on the squares of the charges and hence are strongly dependent on which phase it originates from. However, as discussed in the previous section, measuring the charge fluctuation itself is plagued by systematic uncertainties such as volume fluctuations, which can be avoided if one considers ratio fluctuations. The task is then to find a suitable ratio whose fluctuation is easy to measure and simply related to the net charge fluctuation.

The obvious candidate is the ratio $`F=Q/N_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ where $`Q=N_+N_{}`$ is the net charge and $`N_{\mathrm{ch}}=N_++N_{}`$ is the total charge multiplicity. Instead of using $`F`$, however, it is simpler to consider the the charge ratio $`R=N_+/N_{}`$. If $`N_{\mathrm{ch}}Q`$, i.e. $`\left|F\right|1`$ the fluctuations of $`F`$ are related to those of $`R`$ by

$`\delta R^24\delta F^2`$ (7)
Furthermore in the limit of $`Q<<N_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ the fluctuations are dominated by the small term and we find

$`\delta F^2{\displaystyle \frac{\delta Q^2}{N_{\mathrm{ch}}^2}}`$ (8)
Usually, the number of charged particles is directly related to the entropy generated in these collision. Thus the observable

$`DN_{\mathrm{ch}}\delta R^2=4N_{\mathrm{ch}}\delta F^2=4{\displaystyle \frac{\delta Q^2}{N_{\mathrm{ch}}}}`$ (9)
provides a measure of the charge fluctuations per unit entropy.

In order to see how this observable differs between a hadronic system and a QGP let us compare the value for $`D`$ in a pion gas and in a simple model of free quarks and gluons.

In a pion gas, the fundamental degrees of freedom are of course pions. Hence, $`N_{\mathrm{ch}}=N_{\pi ^+}+N_\pi ^{}`$ and using thermal distributions and disregarding correlations the charge fluctuations are given by

$`\delta Q^2=\delta N_+^2+\delta N_{}^2=w_\pi N_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ (10)
where $`w_\pi \delta N_\pi ^2/N_\pi `$ is slightly bigger than 1 . Hence for a pion gas,

$`D_{\pi gas}4.`$ (11)
In the presence of resonances, this value gets reduced by about 30 % due to the correlations introduced by the resonances, as discussed in section (2.3).

For a thermal system of free quarks and gluons we have in the absence correlation

$`\delta Q^2=Q_u^2w_uN_u+Q_d^2w_dN_d`$ (12)
where $`Q_q`$ is the charges of the quarks and $`N_q`$ denotes the number of quarks and anti-quarks. The constant $`w_q\delta N_q^2/N_q`$ is slightly smaller than 1 due to the fermionic nature of quarks.

Relating the final charged particle multiplicity $`N_{\mathrm{ch}}`$ to the number of primordial quarks and gluons is not as simple. Using entropy conservation one finds

$`N_{\mathrm{ch}}{\displaystyle \frac{2}{3}}\left(N_g+1.2N_u+1.2N_d\right)`$ (13)
leading to

$`D_{QGP}3/4`$ (14)
Actually the charge fluctuations $`(\delta Q)^2`$ have been evaluated in lattice QCD along with the entropy density . Using these results one finds

$`D_{LatticeQCD}11.5`$ (15)
where the uncertainty results from the uncertainty of relating the entropy to the number of charged particles in the final state. Actually the most recent lattice result  for the charge fluctuations, which was obtained in the quenched approximation, is somewhat lower then the result of .

But even using the larger value of $`D=1.5`$ for the Quark Gluon Plasma, there is still a factor of 2 difference between a hadronic gas and the QGP, which should be measurable in experiment.

## 4 Observational issues and model calculations

The key question of course is, how can these reduced fluctuation be observed in the final state which consists of hadrons. Should one not expect that the fluctuations will be those of the hadron gas? The reason, why it should be possible to see the charge fluctuations of the initial QGP has to do with the fact that charge is a conserved quantity. Imagine one measures in each event the net charge in a given rapidity interval $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ such that

$`1\mathrm{\Delta }y\mathrm{\Delta }y_{max}`$ (16)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }y_{max}`$ is the width of the total charge distribution. If, as it is expected, strong longitudinal flow develops already in the QGP-phase, the number of charges inside the rapidity window $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ for a given event is essentially frozen in. And if $`\mathrm{\Delta }y1`$ neither hadronization nor the subsequent collisions in the hadronic phase will be very effective to transport charges in and out of this rapidity window. Thus, the E-by-E charge-fluctuations measured at the end reflect those of the initial state, when the longitudinal flow is developed. Ref.  arrives at the same conclusion on the basis of a Fokker-Planck type equation describing the relaxation of the charge fluctuation in a thermal environment. In this approach the relaxation time for the charge fluctuations is determined by the average rapidity shift of the charges in a collision and by the number of collisions in the hadronic phase. These values can be easily extracted from a transport model and we find that for $`\mathrm{\Delta }y>3`$ the signal should survive the hadronic phase. The smearing of the signal due to hadronization is more difficult to estimate, however. But it is rather unlikely that hadronization, which is a soft process, should give rise to large rapidity shifts.

Thus, in the limit of very large $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ our proposed signal should be robust. However, one should not make $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ too large, as eventually charge conservation becomes relevant. Actually in the limit that $`\mathrm{\Delta }y\mathrm{\Delta }y_{max}`$ charge conservation requires that the fluctuations vanish. For moderate values of $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$, one can very successfully correct for the effect of charge conservation, and this needs to be done for a meaningful interpretation of any experimental data. This correction factor is given by

$`C_y=1{\displaystyle \frac{N_{ch}_{\mathrm{\Delta }y}}{N_{ch}_{\mathrm{total}}}}`$ (17)
Also in case of a finite net charge, which may be due to non negligible baryon stopping, some additional, though small, correction needs to be applied .

$`C_\mu ={\displaystyle \frac{N_{\mathrm{\Delta }y}^+^2}{N_{\mathrm{\Delta }y}^{}^2}}`$ (18)
Thus the actual observable turns out to be

$`\stackrel{~}{D}={\displaystyle \frac{D}{C_yC_\mu }}`$ (19)
In Fig. (2) the importance of these corrections, in particular the charge conservation correction $`C_y`$ is demonstrated. There we compare the uncorrected observable $`D`$ with the corrected observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ as a function of the width of the rapidity window based on a URQMD  simulation. The effect of the charge conservation is clearly visible. With increasing rapidity window the charge fluctuation are suppressed. Once the charge-conservation corrections are applied, the value for $`\stackrel{~}{D}`$ remains constant at the value for a hadron gas of $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$. This is to be expected for the URQMD model, which is of hadronic nature and does not have quark- gluon degrees of freedom.

Also for small $`\mathrm{\Delta }y`$ the value is $`\stackrel{~}{D}4`$ before it drops to $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$ for $`\mathrm{\Delta }y>1.5`$. This effect, which was already predicted in , is simply due to the fact that the correlation introduced by the resonances gets lost if the acceptance window becomes too small.

In Fig. (2), we also show the predictions of the URQMD model as a function of impact parameter for SPS as well as RHIC energies . For both energies hardly any centrality dependence is visible and the results agree within errors with the prediction for the hadron gas. Thus a measurement of $`\stackrel{~}{D}1`$ would clearly indicate the existence of a QGP in the system created in these collisions.

## 5 Some additional remarks

A similar argument as for the charge fluctuations also holds for the fluctuations of the baryon number, since in the QGP the quarks carry fractional baryon number . The observation of reduced baryon number fluctuations, however, is much more difficult since one has to measure neutrons on an event by event basis. Also, so far, no obvious intensive observable has been proposed which would be sensitive to baryon number fluctuations.

Certainly, a measurement of $`D`$ in proton-proton collisions will be necessary in order to rule out that possible small fluctuations are simply due to the nature of the proton wavefunction.

In order to be able to see the reduced charge fluctuations, they have to be imprinted into the hadronic phase. How can this be possible? As we have shown above, the charge fluctuations of a hadronic gas are three times larger than that of a QGP. The only way to reduce the fluctuations in a hadron gas is to introduce additional correlations (see eq. (6)). As we have argued above, neutral hadronic resonances are the obvious candidates, which would lead us to predict an enhancement of neutral resonances. However, if, in addition, we require that on average iso-spin should be conserved, increasing the number of neutral rho mesons would also imply an increase of the charged rho mesons and thus large charge fluctuations. This leaves us with the iso-scalar resonances, such as eta, omega, phi etc. We thus are lead to predict an enhancement of eta, omega and phi production, which can be readily observed via electromagnetic decay channels. An actual calculation based on this conjecture gives enhancement factors of the order of 5.

## 6 Conclusions

We have discussed event-by-event fluctuations in heavy ion collisions. These fluctuations may provide useful information about the properties of the matter created in these collisions, as long as the ‘trivial’ volume fluctuations, inherent to heavy ion collisions, can be removed. We have argued that the fluctuations of particle ratios is not affected by volume fluctuations.

In particular the fluctuations of the ratio of positively over negatively charged particles measures the charge fluctuation per degree of freedom. Due to the fractional charge of the quarks, these are smaller in a QGP than in a hadronic system.

A measurement of our observable $`\stackrel{~}{D}1`$ would provide strong evidence for the existence of a QGP in these collisions. A measurement of $`\stackrel{~}{D}3`$ on the other hand does not rule out the creation of a QGP. There are a number of caveats (see ), which could destroy the signal, such as unexpected large rapidity shifts during hadronization.

## Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Director, Office of Energy Research, Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics, Division of Nuclear Physics, the Office of Basic Energy Science, Division of Nuclear Science, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098. M.B. was also supported by the Feydor Lynen Program of the the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.


text:
# The Role of Clouds in Brown Dwarf and Extrasolar Giant Planet Atmospheres

## 1. Introduction

Even before the first discovery of brown dwarfs and extrasolar giant planets (EGPs) it had been apparent that a detailed appreciation of cloud physics would be required to understand the atmospheres of these objects (e.g. Lunine et al. 1989). Depending on the atmospheric effective temperature, Fe, $`\mathrm{Mg}_2\mathrm{SiO}_4`$, $`\mathrm{MgSiO}_3`$, $`\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{O}`$, and $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ among others may condense in substellar atmospheres. Since every atmosphere in the solar system is influenced by clouds, dust, or hazes, the need to follow the fate of condensates in brown dwarf and EGP atmospheres is self-evident. What has become clearer over the past five years is that details such as the vertical structure and particle sizes in clouds play a decisive role in controlling the thermal structure and emergent spectra from these atmospheres. Indeed the available data are already sufficient to help us choose among competing models.

In this contribution we will briefly summarize some of the roles clouds play in a few solar system atmospheres to illustrate what might be expected of brown dwarf and extrasolar giant planet atmospheres. Then we will summarize a new cloud model developed to study these effects, present some model results, and compare them to data. Since brown dwarfs have similar compositions and effective temperatures to EGPs and a rich dataset already exists, we focus on the lessons learned from the L- and T-dwarfs. We then briefly review the importance of clouds to EGP atmospheres and future observations.

## 2. Clouds in the Solar System

Clouds dramatically alter the appearance, thermal structure, and even evolution of planets. Venus glistens white in the morning and evening skies because sunlight reflects off of its bright cloud tops. If there were no condensates in Venus’ atmosphere the planet would take on a bluish hue from Rayleigh scattered sunlight. Mars’ atmosphere is warmer than it would otherwise be thanks to absorption of incident solar radiation by atmospheric dust (Pollack et al. 1979). The effectiveness of the $`\mathrm{CO}_2`$ greenhouse during Mars’s putative warm and wet early history is tied to poorly understood details of its cloud physics and radiative transfer (Mischna, et al. 2000). Indeed the future climate of Earth in a fossil-fuel-fired greenhouse may hinge on the role water clouds will play in altering Earth’s albedo and scattering or absorbing thermal radiation.

The appearance of the Jovian planets is controlled by the extensive cloud decks covering their disks. On Jupiter and Saturn thick $`\mathrm{NH}_3`$ clouds, contaminated by an unknown additional absorber, reflect about 35% of incident radiation back to space. $`\mathrm{CH}_4`$ and $`\mathrm{H}_2\mathrm{S}`$ clouds play a similar role at Uranus and Neptune.

The vertical structure of the jovian cloud layers was deduced by variation of their reflected spectra inside and outside of molecular absorption bands. Figure 1 illustrates this process. In the left hand image incident sunlight penetrates relatively deeply into the atmosphere and is scattered principally by a cloud deck over the south pole and a bright cloud near the northern mid-latitude limb. The relative heights of these two features cannot be discerned from this single image. The right hand image, however, was taken in the strong $`0.89`$-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ methane absorption band. Here the south polar cloud is invisible since incident sunlight is absorbed by $`\mathrm{CH}_4`$ gas above the cloud before it can scatter. We conclude that the bright northern cloud lies higher in the atmosphere since it is still visible in this image. The application of this technique to spectra and images of the giant planets has yielded virtually all the information we have about the vertical structure of these atmospheres (e.g. West, Strobel, & Tomasko 1986; Baines & Hammel 1994; Baines et al. 1995). A similar reasoning process can be applied to brown dwarf and EGP atmospheres.

The large body of work on jovian clouds cannot be easily generalized, but two robust results are apparent. First, sedimentation of cloud droplets is important. Cloud particles condense from the atmosphere, coagulate, and fall. The fall velocity depends on the size of the drops and the upward velocity induced by convection or other motions in the atmosphere. They do not stay put. A diagnostic often retrieved from imaging or spectroscopic observations of clouds is the ratio of the cloud particle scale height to that of the gas. If condensates were distributed uniformly vertically in the atmosphere this ratio would be 1. Instead numerous investigations have found a ratio for Jupiter’s ammonia clouds of about 0.3 (Carlson, Lacis, & Rossow 1994). The clouds are thus relatively thin in vertical extent. The importance of sedimentation is borne out even for unseen Fe clouds, for example, by Jupiter’s atmospheric chemistry (Fegley & Lodders 1994).

A second important result is that cloud particles are large, a result of coagulation processes within the atmosphere. Sizes are difficult to infer remotely and the sizes to which a given observation is sensitive depend upon the wavelength observed. Nevertheless it is clear that Jupiter’s ammonia clouds include particles with radii exceeding 1 to $`10\mu \mathrm{m}`$, much larger than might be expected simply by direct condensation from vapor in the presence of abundant condensation nuclei (Carlson et al. 1994; Brooke et al. 1996). Similar results are found for ammonia clouds on Saturn (Tomasko et al. 1984) and methane clouds in Uranus and Neptune (Baines et al. 1995).

These two lessons from the solar jovian atmospheres – clouds have finite vertical extents governed by sedimentation and large condensate sizes – guide us as we consider clouds in brown dwarf and extrasolar giant planet atmospheres.

## 3. Evidence of Clouds in Brown Dwarf Atmospheres

The first models of the prototypical T-dwarf Gl 229 B established that grains play a minor role, if any, in controlling the spectrum of the object. The early Gl 229 B models of Marley et al. (1996), Allard et al. (1996) and Tsuji et al. (1996) all found best fits to the observed spectrum by neglecting grain opacity. This provided strong evidence that any cloud layer was confined below the visible atmosphere. All the models, however, shared the same shortcoming of predicting infrared water bands deeper than observed. Another difficulty with the early models is that they either predicted too much flux shortwards of $`1\mu \mathrm{m}`$ (Marley at al. 1996) or used unrealistic molecular opacities (Allard et al. 1996) to lower the optical flux. Griffith, Yelle, & Marley (1999) and Tsuji, Ohnaka, & Aoki (1999) suggested variations of particulate opacity to lower the flux, but ultimately Burrows, Marley, & Sharp (2000) argued that broadened alkali metal bands were responsible for the diminution in flux, a prediction verified by Liebert et al. (2000).

The first confirmation that dust was present in the atmospheres of at least some brown dwarfs came with the discovery of the warmer L-dwarfs. These objects, unlike the methane-dominated T-dwarfs, have red colors in $`JK`$ and spectra that have been best fit with dusty atmosphere models (Jones & Tsuji 1997), although a complete analysis does not yet exist. The difficulty arose in explaining how the dusty, red L-dwarfs evolved into the clear, blue T-dwarfs (Figure 2). Models in which dust does not settle into discrete cloud layers (Chabrier et al. 2000) predict that cooling brown dwarfs would become redder in $`JK`$ with falling effective temperature as more and more dust dominates the atmosphere. Since the atmosphere models employed in this work ignore the lessons learned from our jovian planets (they employ sub-micron particle sizes and do not allow the dust to settle) it is not surprising that they do not fit the data.

## 4. A New Cloud Model

A number of models have been developed to describe the cloud formation processes in giant planet and brown dwarf atmospheres. Ackerman & Marley (2001) describe these in some detail. In general these models suffer from a number of drawbacks which limit their utility for brown dwarf and EGP modeling. Some rely upon free parameters which are almost impossible to predict while others do not predict quantities relevant to radiative transfer of in the atmosphere. For example, the atmospheric supersaturation cannot be specified without a detailed knowledge of the number of condensation nuclei available. Ackerman & Marley developed a new eddy sedimentation model for cloud formation in substellar atmospheres that attempts to predict cloud particle sizes and vertical extents.

Ackerman & Marley argue that in terrestrial clouds the downward transport of large drops as rain removes substantial mass from clouds and reduces their optical depth. Yet properly modeling the condensation, coagulation, and transport of such drops requires a complex microphysical model and a concomitant abundance of free parameters. In an attempt to account for the expected effects of such microphysical processes without modeling them in detail, they introduce a new term into the equation governing the mass fraction $`q_t`$ of an atmospheric condensate at a given altitude $`z`$ in an atmosphere:

$$K\frac{q_t}{z}+f_{\mathrm{rain}}w_{}q_c=0.$$
$`(1)`$
Here the upward transport of the vapor and condensate is by eddy diffusion as parameterized by an eddy diffusion coefficient $`K`$. In equilibrium this upward transport is balanced by the downward transport of condensate $`q_c`$. The free parameter $`f_{\mathrm{rain}}`$ has been introduced as the ratio of the mass-weighted droplet sedimentation velocity to $`w_{}`$, the convective velocity scale. In essence $`f_{\mathrm{rain}}`$ allows downward mass transport to be dominated by massive drops larger than the scale set by the local eddy updraft velocity: in other words, rain. Ackerman & Marley (2001) treat $`f_{\mathrm{rain}}`$ as an adjustable parameter and explore its consequences.

## 5. Clouds and the L- to T-dwarf transition

Given the importance of clouds to the L-dwarf spectra and the absence of significant cloud opacity in the T-dwarfs, it is clear that the departure of clouds with falling $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ is an important milestone in the transition from L- to T-dwarfs. Marley (2000) demonstrated that a simple cloud model in which the silicate cloud was always one scale-height thick could account for the change in $`JK`$ color from the red L-dwarfs to the blue T-dwarfs. Now using the more physically motivated cloud model of Ackerman & Marley we can better test this hypothesis.

Figure 3 illustrates the brightness temperature spectra of six brown dwarf models with three different $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. In the warmest and coolest cases ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}=1800`$ and 900 K) models with and without clouds appear similar. In the warmer case silicate and iron clouds are just forming in the atmosphere and are relatively optically thin, so their influence is slight. In the cooler case as in the right-hand image of Uranus in Figure 1, the main cloud deck forms below the visible atmosphere. In the intermediate case ($`T_{\mathrm{eff}}=1400\mathrm{K}`$) an optically thick cloud forms in the visible atmosphere and substantially alters the emitted spectrum. The atmospheric structure predicted by the Ackerman & Marley (2001) model for this case is similar to that inferred by Basri et al. (2000) from Cs line shapes in L-dwarf atmospheres. Thus a cooling brown dwarf moves from relatively cloud free conditions to cloudy to clear.

The solid lines in Figure 2 show how the $`JK`$ color evolves with $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$. Objects first become red as dust begins to dominate the visible atmosphere, then blue as water and methane begin to absorb strongly in K band. Models in which the dust does not settle (Chabrier et al. 2000) predict $`JK`$ colors much redder than observed. Instead the colors of the L-dwarfs are best fit by models which include some precipitation as parameterized by $`f_{\mathrm{rain}}=3`$ to 5. The data clearly require models for objects cooler than the latest L-dwarfs to rapidly change from $`JK2`$ to 0 over a relatively small $`T_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ range. While models with $`f_{\mathrm{rain}}=3`$ to 5 do turn blue as the clouds sink below the visible atmosphere (Figure 2), the variation is not rapid enough to satisfy the observational constraints. Ackerman & Marley suggest that holes in the clouds may begin to dominate the disk-averaged spectra as the clouds are sinking out of sight. Jupiter’s 5-$`\mu \mathrm{m}`$ spectrum is indeed dominated by flux emerging through holes in its clouds. Bailer-Jones & Mundt (2000) find variability in L-dwarf atmospheres that may be related to such horizontal cloud patchiness.

Despite the successes of the Ackerman & Marley model, clearly much more work needs to be done to understand clouds in the brown dwarfs. Perhaps three dimensional models of convection coupled to radiative transport will be required.

## 6. Extrasolar Giant Planets

The issues of cloud physics considered above of course will also apply to the extrasolar giant planets (Marley 1998; Marley et al. 1999; Seager, Whitney, & Sasselov 2000; Sudarsky, Burrows, & Pinto 2000). These papers demonstrate that the reflected spectra of extrasolar giant planets depends sensitively on the cloud particle size and vertical distribution. As already demonstrated by the brown dwarfs in the foregoing section, the emergent thermal flux is similarly affected.

Indeed Sudarsky et al. suggest that a classification scheme based on the presence or absence of specific cloud layers be used to categorize the extrasolar giant planets. Moderate spectral resolution transit observations of close-in EGPs, if the bandpasses are correctly chosen, will certainly provide first-order information on cloud heights and vertical profiles of these atmospheres (Seager & Sasselov 2000; Hubbard et al. 2001). Coronagraphic multi-wavelength imaging of extrasolar giant planets will provide similar information (see Figure 1).

## 7. Conclusion

It is ironic that although the physics governing the vast bulk of the mass of brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets is very well in hand, the old problem of weather prediction governs the radiative transfer and thus the only remotely sensed quantity. The good news is that there will soon be much more weather to talk about, even if we aren’t any farther along in doing anything about it.

### Acknowledgments.

This work was supported by NASA grant NAG5-8919 and NSF grants AST-9624878 and AST-0086288. The authors benefited from conversations with Dave Stevenson, Sara Seager, Adam Burrows, and Bill Hubbard. Heidi Hammel and Kevin Zahnle offered particularly helpful comments on an earlier draft of this contribution.

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# Critical Examination of the Conceptual Foundations of Classical Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Physics

## 1 Introduction

Classical mechanics (CM) is one of the greatest achievements of human knowledge. It is a compact building whose conceptual and mathematical aspects have been known and studied in all details and consequences, though the formation of the theory itself was a difficult process which took three centuries (XVII-XIX) to be completely achieved.

But, to the best of my knowledge, some basic — and sometimes only implicitly assumed — postulates of CM have not been subjected to critical examination — a state of affairs which can be partly explained by the implicit character of some of them. This situation, on the other hand, has as a consequence that all basic postulates of the theory have not been considered in their connection as a system — contrarily to what happens for the formalism of the theory, which from the beginning of XIX century is presented in a systematic form. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, there is until today no handbook which introduces these postulates in systematic order at the beginning of the exposition111See \[LANDAU/LIFSHITZ 1976a\] \[GOLDSTEIN 1950\] \[HESTENES 1986\] \[KNUDSEN/HJORTH 1995\] for instance..

Such an enterprise is possible today because quantum mechanics has shown, especially in the last twenty years, that several assumptions of CM are far away from being above a legitimate suspicion or a critical examination.

I will try to expose in a systematic form these assumptions. In section 2, I shall examine CM’s determinism and the postulates from which it stems. In section 3 a similar analysis is devoted to reductionism, while section 4 shows that mechanicism is equivalent to determinism plus reductionism. Section 5 examines the postulate of the completeness of knowledge (and not of the completeness of the theory itself, a problem which today cannot be posed in this form). Sections 68 are devoted to the more general consequences of these assumptions while in section 9 some concluding remarks will follow.

## 2 Determinism

Everybody admits that CM is deterministic. But determinism is a more complex assumption which supposes other, more basic postulates or principles.

### 2.1 Omnimoda determinatio

The most basic assumption of CM is the postulate of perfect determination which may be expressed as follows: all properties of a physical system are perfectly determined, where a physical system can be roughly understood as an object or a collection of objects (somehow interrelated) which can be (directly or indirectly) experienced, and a property as the value which can be assigned to a physical variable or observable. Perfectly determined means that each variable of the system has at all times a definite value.

This assumption was always implicitly made. For all ‘classical’ physicists it was so self-evident that it was even not worth of mention. In fact modern physicists — like Galilei, Newton, and many others — inherited such assumption from all past philosophy: Democritus, Plato, Aristotle, the middle-age philosophers until the modernity never thought differently but all assumed that all properties of being are determined (the problem was obviously to determine what the main or true being is). In fact Kant says: all what exists is completely determined \[KANT 1763, 85\] \[KANT 1787, B 599–602\], which means that, between every possible predicate of an object and its negation, one of the pair must be actualized. Since every physical property can be reduced in a binary form (i.e. using what in quantum mechanics are called projectors) — for example ‘moving at the speed of light’ or ‘not moving at the speed of light’ (in some space–time context and by reference to a system, both to be specified) —, then the philosophical definition is a generalization of the physical one and, so far as physical objects are considered, they can been taken to be equivalent. For this examination Kant is an especially interesting example because it has been often told that his philosophy is strictly related with Newtonian mechanics. The latin traditional expression for the complete determination is omnimoda determinatio and can be found for example in \[BAUMGARTEN 1739, par. 148\].222On the problem see also Leibniz’s letter to de Volder of april 1702 in \[LEIBNIZ PS, 239\].

Now it turns out that quantum mechanics violates the omnimoda determinatio at least through the superposition principle333For argumentation of this point see chapters 24, 30 and 46 of \[AULETTA 2000\].: In fact if a quantum system can be in a superposition state, say of wave localized in an arbitrary region 1 and of another in an arbitrary but different region 2, then, following Kant, it is certainly impossible to say ‘either it is in the region 1 or it is not’ or ‘either it is in the region 2 or it is not’, or, more simply, ‘either it is in the region 1 or it is in the region 2’, i.e. quantum mechanics does not acknowledges a generalized exclusion disjunction444On this specific point see \[HARDEGREE 1979\].. There are no means to reduce such an indetermination to subjective ignorance, so that it must be taken as an ontologically basic feature of the theory.

### 2.2 Continuity

The omnimoda determinatio may be easily confused with determinism. But they are not equivalent: In fact one can conceive a ‘classical’ world where every ‘state of the world’ (roughly: the complex of all states of all systems within at a given instant) is in itself perfectly determined though without relationship with past and future states, in the sense that the world can jump from a state to another randomly. If this would be the case, nobody could speak of a deterministic evolution (for a more formal definition of determinism see next subsection).

Therefore, in order to obtain determinism we also need continuity. This assumption is known as the principle of continuity and it states that the variables associated to a physical system are supposed to be continuous, which in physics means that, given two arbitrary values of a physical variable, all intermediate possible real values are also allowed.

The principle of continuity, though often not explicitly stated in handbooks, was widely used already from the early days of CM: one may remember here, for example, the use of the principle made by Galilei by the law of fall555See \[MACH 1883, 130–131, 181\] \[MACH 1905, 223\]..

Obviously the point of major conflict between CM and quantum mechanics was continuity, which is rejected by the quantum postulate (the values of quantum observables can be discontinuous) and by the fact that quantum systems can jump666The quantum postulate was assumed by Planck \[PLANCK 1900a, PLANCK 1900b\] and generalized by Bohr \[BOHR 1913\]. About the formalism of quantum jumps see \[CARMICHAEL 1993\]..

### 2.3 Determinism

Sufficient and necessary conditions of determinism are the postulate of perfect determination and the principle of continuity. In fact, given the perfect determination of the state of a system at an arbitrary initial state, if its dynamic variables (for example the energy) are continuous, then also every future state of the system will be perfectly determined and unique, i.e. without alternatives or without branching777One may think at Laplace’s dictum that nothing is uncertain: see \[CASSIRER 1957, 134–35\] \[EARMAN 1986, 7\]. The latter book represent a good analysis of classical determinism.. As it is known, a mathematical formulation of this assumption is given by Hamilton’s canonical equations, which in terms of Poisson brackets can be written

$`\dot{q}=\{H,q\},`$ $`\dot{p}=\{H,p\}.`$ (1)
The Hamiltonian $`H`$, the energy function of the system, fully describes the system and all its future (and past) evolution, and it is expressed in terms of the position $`q`$ and the momentum $`p`$. Note, however, that determinism is not the same as predictability: in fact it is well known that, for a large class of problems, almost identical initial conditions can have very different solutions for later times \[see also subsection 3.2\].

Determinism too is an ancient philosophical concept, introduced probably by ancient atomism and further developed by ancient stoicism.

In quantum mechanics the Schrödinger equation is also deterministic, but here what evolves deterministically is an amplitude, i.e. it is — paradoxically — a determinism which is intrinsically probabilistic. In fact, in the general case, we cannot foresee what values the observables will have; we can only write their probability distributions. As we have already said, the break of continuity is a major feature of quantum mechanics. For this reason Bohr \[BOHR 1928\] \[BOHR 1929\] spoke of a break of determinism and of causality as such. Causality may be here understood in a strict and in a wide sense, following the distinction between determinism and predictability. In fact, in a strict sense it may be taken as equivalent to determinism. In a wide sense it may be understood as predictability, and then it should be rather taken as equivalent to mechanicism \[see section 4\] to the extent in which also linearity and separability are necessary in order to have a predictable future.

One could think that, behind perfect determination and continuity, determinism also supposes conservation laws. We may understand the problem of conservation in two forms:

nothing which is physical can disappear;

in an isolated system certain physical quantities such as the angular momentum are conserved.

On the second point we shall return later \[see subsection 5.1\]. Point i) is a general statement about the conservation of energy (which obviously is a conserved quantity also in the second sense). In fact energy is the basic physical quantity which, following our physics, can be transformed but never destroyed, a fact that is expressed in a general form by Einstein’s equation

$$E=mc^2,$$
(2)
which is valid also in the case of annihilation of particle–antiparticle pairs (in fact, as it is known, their mass is transformed in the energy of ‘outgoing’ photons).

In the statement i) it is the universe as a whole which is considered as a closed system. It is evident that this statement is a more basic one — but also a weaker one — than statement ii). In fact, we could think a world where there can be no strict conservation of the energy in the sense of statement ii) and notwithstanding would be deterministic. For instance, there could be an universal but unknown and unknowable ‘ether’ such that all observable physical system lose part of their energy. Then the energy would be conserved in the sense of statement i) because a form of energy is transformed in another form by the action of ether, but it is not conserved in the sense of statement ii) because, for example, we could have a a physical law of this form:

$$\dot{p}=F\alpha p,$$
(3)
where $`F`$ is the force and $`\alpha `$ some parameter. Obviously the ‘path’ or the ‘trajectory’ of the every physical system should be always calculable, i.e. the loss of energy should follow strict laws and not be random. Otherwise the world could be not deterministic. On the other hand, as we have said, even if the ‘physics’ in this universe should be expressed in terms of equations like (3), the ether is not something which is outside of such an universe, so that, in a certain objective (or meta–physical) sense (God’s point of view?), proposition i) is satisfied. But the difficulty of this position is to admit the existence of something physical which in principle cannot be experienced.

## 3 Reductionism

Reductionism, as we shall see in that what follows, is another basic piece of CM and, as determinism, it supposes other assumptions which need to be preliminarily examined.

### 3.1 Materialism

One may wonder that the assumption of materialism is basic for CM since one may think that it is a metaphysical assumption without consequence or relevance upon a physical science as CM is. But this is not the case: CM is a mechanics, i.e. a theory of the motion of bodies and of the forces which act upon them. And a body is necessarily a material entity.

In fact the existence and the basic properties of matter were assumed and defined from the beginnings already by Galilei888See \[CASSIRER 1906, II, 387–89\]. See also \[MACH 1883, 248–49\] \[HALL 1954, 106–107\]. and by Newton. In the third regula philosophandi of book III of the Principia \[NEWTON 1687, 552–55\], Newton makes a catalogue of properties of matter (bodies): Extension (a cartesian property), hardness, impenetrability, capacity to move, inertia999See \[KOYRÉ 1957, ch. 7\] for commentary.. About hardness, in \[NEWTON 1704, 388–92\] it is explained that the parts of all homogeneous hard bodies which fully touch one another stick together very strongly. From their cohesion Newton inferred that particles attract one another by some force, which in immediate contact is exceedingly strong. On the other hand all bodies seem to be composed of hard particles; for otherwise fluids, as water, would not freeze, or fluids as “spirit of nitre and mercury” would not become hard “by dissolving the mercury and evaporating the flegma”. And therefore hardness can be reckoned as the property of all uncompounded matter. So far Newton. It is then evident that all fluids can be reduced to hard bodies by freezing or evaporating: In this case the particles cohere fully, which in turn means that some bodies are not hard only because they are to a certain extent rarefied, i.e. there is some vacuum between the particles101010An important difference with respect to Descartes \[KOYRÉ 1968, 33–34, 1205–110\].. In other words, following Newton, all matter can be reduced to some ground ‘state’ in which it is fully homogeneous and hence inelastic. In fact elasticity is possible only if there is some internal structure to the matter, which is excluded by the postulated homogeneity.

One may discuss — and Newton himself had no final position about111111See the mentioned regula III. — if matter is a continuous medium divisible in infinitum or it is composed by elementary corpuscles which are strongly bound and fixed together by adhering to each other. However, the consequence is that, by full homogeneity and/or rigidity, in case of collision of two bodies moving at the same speed from opposite directions, they will coalesce at the point of collision (because fully inelastic).121212For examination see \[KOYRÉ 1957, ch. 9\]. One may say that the kinetic energy has been transformed in some activity of the particles composing the body, but precisely this is impossible because there is no internal structure and no possibility of the particles to translate, to rotate or vibrate relatively to one another131313For all the problem of bodies’ collision see \[MACH 1883, 310–31\].. In a general way note that Newton had not included the force as an intrinsic property of matter as such — i.e. forces can only act ‘from outside’ upon the matter. In fact Newton only attributes a vis inertiæ to the matter and says \[NEWTON 1704, 397–98\] that it “is a passive principle by which bodies persist in their motion or rest, receive motion in proportion to the force impressing it, and resist as much as they are resisted. By this principle alone there never could have been any motion in the world. Some other principle was necessary for putting bodies into motion; and now they are in motion, some other principle is necessary for conserving the motion. For from the various composition of two motions, ’tis very certain that there is not always the same quantity of motion in the world. \[…\] it appears that motion may be got or lost. But by reason of the tenacity of the fluids, and attrition of their parts, and the weakness of elasticity in solids, motion is much more apt to be lost than got, and is always upon the decay. For bodies which are either absolutely hard, or so oft as to be void of elasticity, will not rebound from one other. Impenetrability makes them only stop. If two equal bodies meet directly in vacuo, they will by the laws of motion stop where they meet, and lose all their motion, and remain in rest, unless they be elastic, and receive new motion from their spring.” Therefore Newton concludes \[NEWTON 1704, 401–402\] that it seems to him that “these particles \[of matter\] have not only a vis inertiæ …but also that they are moved by certain active principles, such as is that of gravity, and that which causes fermentation, and the cohesion of bodies.” As it is clear in the following pages of the Optics and in other places, these principles are due to the direct action of God. Therefore, one can understand that Leibniz, in his letter to the princess of Wales \[LEIBNIZ PS, VII, 352\], defend the conservation law of ’force and energy’ against Newton. And it is interesting that, in his first answer, Clark writes \[NEWTON 1704, VII, 354\] that God “not only composes or puts things together, but is himself the Author and continual Preserver of their original forces and moving powers”.

Therefore we see that the materialism assumed since the early days of CM is far from being obvious, and the idea of a fully homogeneous matter was very soon abandoned. In quantum mechanics there can be no question of perfectly hard and localized corpuscles: To quantum entities is intrinsic a wave-like behavior or some fuzziness. Therefore it is better to speak of extended particles141414On this point see chapters chapters 30 and 33 of \[AULETTA 2000\].. On the other hand properties as the hardness or impenetrability seem inadequate to microentities as we know them now.

### 3.2 Linearity

Linearity is an important property of classical systems. In itself it is essentially a mathematical property, because it consists in the requirement that the basic equations of CM must be linear, i.e. reducible to a form like

$$a_0(x)y^{(n)}+a_1(x)y^{(n1)}+\mathrm{}+a_n(x)y=f(x),$$
(4)
where $`a_0(x),a_1(x),\mathrm{},a_n(x)`$ are coefficients, $`f(x)`$ is some function and $`y^{(n)}`$ the $`n`$–th derivative of $`y`$. But linearity has a conceptual relevance to the extent in which it excludes feed–back, i.e. self–increasing processes.

It is linearity which allows an important aspect of the ‘reductionistic methodology’ of CM: the factorization between component ‘elements’ of a system, for example the decomposition of motion in components by Galilei, the decomposition of forces by Newton or the decomposition of harmonic components151515For these examples see \[MACH 1883, 144–45, 191–92\].. In other words if the cause (the force) $`\mathrm{C}_1`$ produces the effect (the acceleration) $`\mathrm{E}_1`$ and the cause (the force) $`\mathrm{C}_2`$ the effect (the acceleration) $`\mathrm{E}_2`$, then $`\mathrm{C}_1+\mathrm{C}_2`$ produces $`\mathrm{E}_1+\mathrm{E}_2`$. This principle is often called principle of (classical) superposition.

One could think that in CM a small perturbation on a given system or the weak interaction of this with another system only causes a small deviation in the trajectory of the system in the phase space, such that, normally, the system will ‘absorb’ it and return on the ancient deterministic path. But a perfect classical system can show such a dependence on initial condition that its evolution can be chaotic (in fact in chaotic regime this dependence is expressed by a strong divergence of initial very close, indistinguishable trajectories in phase space). Note that, in the chaos theory, chaos itself is intrinsic and deterministic and not stochastic and extrinsic — in other words it is not due to random fluctuations of the environment or to noise161616On the point see \[SCHUSTER 1988\] \[RUELLE 1989\].. In fact there can be chaos also by Hamiltonian systems.

Linearity is not violated by quantum mechanics. In fact Schrödinger equation is linear, and any attempt to introduce non–linear terms in this equation has up to now failed171717A non–linear equation for quantum mechanics was proposed in \[BIALYNICKI-B./MYCIELSKI 1976\]. Shimony proposed an experiment aiming to verify if there are non–linear terms and if they have the magnitude proposed by Bialynicki–Birula and Mycielski \[SHIMONY 1979\]. A later experiment performed on these outlines tendentially excludes such terms \[SHULL et al. 1980\]. Obviously this does not mean that the methods of quantum mechanics and chaos theory cannot be combined. They can be, and actually are unified in what is today known as ‘quantum chaos’..

### 3.3 Separability

Separability is another key feature of CM. But it is again an implicit assumption and firstly in 1935, as CM was confronted with quantum mechanics, it was stated explicitly by Einstein and co–workers \[EINSTEIN et al. 1935\]. The principle of separability may be expressed in the following way: given two non–interacting physical systems, all their physical properties are separately determined, or, in other terms, the result of a measurement on one system cannot depend on a measurement performed on the other system. The meaning of the principle is the following: two systems can be interdependent only through a physical interaction (for example some form of potential energy).

Again quantum mechanics violates the separability principle by a consequence of the superposition principle for multiparticle systems: entanglement. In fact for entangled subsystems, it is not possible to factorize the probabilities of the outcomes of experiments performed on each subsystem locally. In other words, probabilities calculated on one of two ‘distant’ subsystems, even if they do not physically interact, are not independent181818There exists a wide literature on this subject. For a summary see chapters 31 and 34–35 of \[AULETTA 2000\]..

### 3.4 Reductionism

Now we may summarize the results of this section by saying that materialism plus linearity plus separability are sufficient and necessary conditions of reductionism. Roughly speaking, by reductionism it is usually meant that a system is given as the “sum” of its constituent components, or, equivalently, that any system can be divided into “elementary” parts. The aim of reductionism is then to find the ultimate elements of matter which cannot be further reduced. To our knowledge there is no certainty (and even doubts) that such a task will ever be accomplished. One speaks today, for example, of quarks and leptons as ‘divisible’ particles. However, quantum mechanics violates this type of reductionism because it violates the separability principle — and does not, as we have seen, violates linearity (leaving aside the problem of materialism). In fact it is evident that, if separability is violated, no reduction of a whole to ‘parts’ is possible because the parts could be not treated as independent systems.

On the other hand, reductionism can be also understood as the reduction of more complex theories and sciences as chemistry and biology to physics and especially to quantum mechanics (this may be called epistemological or methodological reductionism relatively to the first type, which may be called ontological reductionism). It is true that quantum mechanics shows its effects (entanglement, for example) also at mesoscopic level. But this means anyway that the mesoscopic or the macroscopic world are only ‘illusions’, apparent realities. In fact the process of decoherence and especially of localization which goes together with decoherence, especially when the number and the complexity of systems grows, is throughout objective191919See chapters 17 and 24–25 of \[AULETTA 2000\].. On the other hand, no necessity arises to conceive of methodological reductionism as a one–way operation: If one speaks of reduction to more elementary objects, one should speak — with more reason — of a methodological reduction of microscopic equations for the constituents of a system (via coarse graining) to differential equations for macroscopic variables, and from these (via numerical calculations of Poincaré sections) to low dimensional Poincaré maps202020See \[SCHUSTER 1988, 14–16\] \[BERGÉ et al. 1984, 63–78\]..

## 4 Mechanicism

Sufficient and necessary conditions of mechanicism are determinism and reductionism. No ‘classical’ mechanics can violate the one or the other. In facts mechanicism consists in the theory that, given an input (some force) we have a fully automatic and proportional output (some acceleration), which would be surely impossible if the whole system were more than the sum of the ‘parts’ (i.e. if the requirement of reductionism would be violated), or if it would show a random reaction to a given action (i.e. if the requirement of determinism would be violated). On the other hand, a system satisfying the features of determinism and reductionism would be necessarily mechanic. In fact we distinguish the behavior of organic life from a pure mechanical behavior exactly through the violation of the one or of the other requirement or of both.

## 5 Completeness

The possibility of a complete knowledge in CM is dependent on other assumptions, namely determinism and isolability. Let us examine firstly the assumption of isolability.

### 5.1 Isolability

CM assumes that isolated systems are possible; i.e. that we can always theoretically treat and experimentally (at least in principle) generate a system without physical interdependence with other systems or with the environment. It is the isolability which guarantees conservation laws of pertinent quantities. In fact angular momentum, energy or motion can be conserved only if the system is considered as isolated from others, i.e. there is no interaction such as to cause dispersion or no action of an external force such as to change its motion. Quantum mechanics does not apparently violate this assumption. But it may be asked if there are actually isolated quantum–mechanical systems and even more if macroscopic systems can be fully isolated.

### 5.2 Completeness

In CM it is supposed that one can perfectly know (at least in principle) all properties of a given system. In other words the properties of the object system can be perfectly measured. Therefore it is postulated that the measurement errors can be — at least in principle — always reduced below an arbitrarily small quantity $`ϵ`$. Hence this assumption may be called the postulate of reduction to zero of the measurement error.

Note that this postulate is not a direct consequence of the principle of perfect determination only, because it can be the case that a system is objectively but not subjectively perfectly determined. It supposes continuity too: in fact if the pertinent variables were discontinuous, then we could not approximate to a point-like value in a given interval. Hence it presupposes determinism (which, as we know, is equivalent to perfect determination plus continuity). But isolability too: In fact if the system could never be really isolated, we could never know its properties perfectly, even not in a very large time interval, because, during the flow of time, it may be that small interactions with external systems cause small uncertainties in the measurement results so that — even if these uncertainties do not cumulate — one cannot go beyond a certain threshold.

If we speak of the perfect knowledge of all properties of a given system at the same time, then this assumption is obviously violated in quantum mechanics through the uncertainty principle. In fact this principle states that, by increasing the knowledge or the determination of an observable of a conjugate pair, the complementary observable must proportionally increase its uncertainty.

## 6 Classical Mechanics

We can now draw the first general conclusion from the above analysis: CM consists of both mechanicism and completeness (of knowledge). There is no doubt that there can be no CM without mechanicism. But one may think that completeness is not a necessary condition of CM. This is not the case because CM is actually so built that a perfect transparency of the object system to the knowledge corresponds to the perfect ontological determination of it. But it could also be not otherwise: For a physicist the primary questions are objective and not subjective: In order to admit an incomplete knowledge together with the assumption of mechanicism — and hence of a perfect ontological determination —, one should know some basic limitations of human mind, which in principle exclude the possibility for human beings of perfectly knowing systems which are objectively perfectly determined. But no such problems have ever been found.

## 7 Classical Gnoseology

Classical mechanics has been developed together with what may be called a classical gnoseology — i. e. the gnoseology of Galilei, Spinoza, Newton, Kant and many others. Classical gnoseology certainly supposes the completeness of knowledge, i.e. that the properties of being can be perfectly known. But it also supposes what may be called a ‘mirroring’ theory. Explicitly: classical gnoseology considers the act of knowledge as a mirroring of the properties of the object.

In other words, knowledge is understood as a reproduction of objective and given data and not as a form of interaction between subject and object. This understanding of knowledge is very ancient and can also be found by philosophers as Plato. Several philosophy schools have shared this pointof view. Obviously, there is no agreement between several schools about what is the being to be reproduced (ideas as platonic substances, atoms, forms, material objects, and so on). When knowledge is so understod, then one assigns to the subject a mere reproductive and representative role.

However this view is no so evident. In fact pragmatism212121On this point see \[PEIRCE 1878a, PEIRCE 1878b\]. proposes a different theory of knowledge. It is seen as a problems–solving enterprise which, by starting with a problem, assumes a hypothesis (under many others possible ones) because it can solve in a satisfactory manner the conflicts or the contradictions arisen from the problem itself. This is not the place where to examine this subject in details, but I think that this explanation of how theories work and are generated is far more satisfactory for describing scientific knowledge than the traditional, classical approach. I only wish to stress following aspects of this explanation:

Subject and object are not understood as static beings and knowledge not as a form of translation of data into a mind (and how would it be possible?).

Experience is dynamic and comprehends ‘subject’ and ‘object’222222On this point see \[DEWEY 1929\]..

Knowledge is open and never represents a final answer.

Knowledge is a form of praxis and the theory is not completely separated from other human activities.

## 8 Classical Philosophy

Classical philosophy, the main stream in XVII-XVIII centuries, is compound of CM plus classical gnoseology. That philosophers and physicists of that age have acknowledged all or almost all the above principles can be seen from the following examples. Let us first take Kant’s examination of the ontological proof of the existence of God232323In \[KANT 1787, B 627\].. Kant says that when I affirm that God exists, I add no new predicate to the concept of God; rather I pose only the subject (God) in itself with all his predicates, i.e. the object, in relationship with my concept. Both, the object and the concept, must contain the same. In other words, in Kant’s terminology, what is real does not contain something more than what is only possible (the concept). If the object should contain more than the concept, then the latter will not express the whole object and will therefore be not adequate to this object. So far Kant. In this argumentation, the ominimoda determinatio is always taken for granted and three additional principles are (implicitly) assumed: that the concept is isomorphic with the object (the predicates contained in the concept corresponds to properties that the object has: it is the mirroring theory); that therefore an adequate knowledge must be complete (all properties of the object must be considered in the concept); and finally that one can consider the object ‘in itself’, i.e. in complete isolation from other objects (it is the assumption of isolation). Since this is a general arguments which goes beyond to the specific problem of the existence of God, one can consider the object without relationship with the other objects of the universe. It is true that in \[KANT 1787, B 599–602\] one speaks of the omnimoda determinatio as an ideal, but in the above proof it is taken as an ontological fact.

To my knowledge Kant never rejected the continuity and perhaps he had nothing against linearity. He surely assumed a form of materialism: Since our knowledge can only happen in an experience which is intrinsic spatio–temporal \[KANT 1787, B 33–73\], then the objects of knowledge can only be bodies; and in fact Kant discusses the problem of matter \[KANT 1787, B 230, 277–78\] and excludes that the subject of knowledge can also be object of knowledge \[KANT 1787, B 152–165\]. Of all above postulates only separability remains; but, as already said, it has been the object of scientific analysis only in the 1930s.

Then let us also briefly discuss the assumptions (but not the details of the argumentation) of the article of Einstein and co–workers \[EINSTEIN et al. 1935\]. There is no doubt that it acknowledges the omnimoda determinatio. In fact the aim of the article is to show that there can be elements of the reality which cannot be represented in quantum mechanics due to its ‘uncertain’ character (uncertainty principle) — in fact, as it is well known, Einstein thought that quantum mechanics could only represent a statistical (and therefore incomplete) theory of microentities. Specifically, the aim of the article is to show that quantum mechanics violates a sufficient condition of reality, which may be expressed as follows: If, without in any way disturbing a system, we can predict with probability equal to unity the value of a physical quantity, then there exists an element of the physical reality corresponding to this physical quantity. It is evident that two things are supposed here: first that the reality is perfectly determined in itself; second, that one can also know it perfectly (our completeness condition). Continuity is evidently acknowledged in the formal development of the argument. So there is no doubt that the article also acknowledged determinism (= omnimoda determinatio \+ continuity). Though no word is said about materialism and linearity, the core of the article is represented by a strong defense of the principle of separability (here for the first time formulated), so that one can suppose that reductionism too was a valid assumption for Einstein and co–workers.

But the article goes even further. In fact two definitions are formulated with great emphasis at the beginning: That of correctness and that of completeness. It is said that a theory is totally correct if every element of the theory has a counterpart in reality: In other words a totally correct theory is one without superfluous theoretical terms. It is evident that the necessary condition for assuming this definition is the mirroring theory: If theories could not mirror reality, could also not mirror reality correctly. About completeness it is said that a theory is complete if every element of reality has a counterpart in it — it is evident that correctness together with completeness establish an equivalence relationship between physical theory and reality. This definition of the completeness of a theory is much stronger than that previously formulated. In conclusion CM and classical gnoseology, and therefore classical philosophy as such, are defended in Einstein’s article.

It is very interesting that Kant and Einstein — both scientists and philosophers — defend essentially the body of classical philosophy, and that the latter does it in open conflict with quantum mechanics.

## 9 Conclusions

Summing up, CM can be schematically represented as in the figure.

CM has been for three centuries the model of what Science is and should be. Then it is a little surprising that its basic assumptions were assumed without critical examination. But two points are here very important:

Without quantum mechanics and its consequences nobody would have perceived the problems hidden in assumptions which ultimately stem from the common sense or from a refinement of the ordinary experience about macroscopic objects. This does not mean at all that this experience is in itself wrong. We live and act in a macroscopic world where the struggle for life is the most important thing, and for this practical purpose it makes no sense — and it is perhaps even dangerous — to assume, for instance, that objects are partly not perfectly determined or fuzzy242424And, with high probability, also macroscopic objects are partly fuzzy; in fact one has shown theoretically and finally experimentally that, at mesoscopic level, ‘Schrödinger cats’ are possible \[MONROE et al. 1996\] \[BRUNE et al. 1996\].

But neither CM’s assumptions are wrong as such. CM has been in fact a powerful tool in order to explore Nature and establish some basic features of the physical world. Stated in other terms, for all that one knew at that time, CM worked — and still works — very well. What is wrong is only the supposition that CM’s assumptions and laws are objective in the sense that they mirror what Nature is in itself. In other words, what was and is wrong about CM is a ‘mirroring’ gnoseology and epistemology which has produced an absolutisation of the this physical theory. In other words, we have here a confirmation e contrario of the rightness of the point of view of pragmatism.

## Acknowledgments

This article is born from a synthesis of several lessons about Classical Mechanics and discussions with my students in the Gregoriana University in Rome.

The present article owes very much to Prof. Giorgio Parisi whose deep insights were for me especially enlightening. I also thank Dr. Mauro Fortunato and Dr. Valeria Mosini who red the manuscript and gave to me plenty suggestions.