The Distributed Electron

This paper, originally published in the International Journal of Quantum Foundations in April 2025, summarizes most of the work carried out on Real Wave Quantum Mechanics thus far. It shows how massive longitudinal waves can form wave vortices (FR's). Interaction between these FR's and with a stochastic bakground wave field leads to stable structures whose form and energies follow the Schrodinger/Dirac equations. Interpreting the phase gradient of the FR field as a momentum gives the correct orbital angular momentum. Spin angular momentum is no longer mysterious, but results form the summed angular monetum of all the FR's. The mass of an FR arises solely from the wave energy 'trapped' within the vortex and likewise, momentum arises from the flow of this energy between FR's - they do not move within stable structures. A key feature of structures is that the phases of FR's alternate by ~pi radians. It is this feature which leads to the Schrodinger like behaviour and also explains the Pauli Exclusion Principle. Structures in motion maintain 'Phase Harmony' (an extended version of deBroglie's original concept) by undergoing Lorentzian time dilation and length contraction. Interpreting these findings resolves many of the puzzling features of QM. For example, considering a particle to be in two places at once is not a problem but is simply a category error - structures 'are' extended through space, possibly over very great distances. The particle aspect of QM arises because 'observations' causes the real physical structure to collapse to a point. For example, in the twin slit experiment, only the wave-like structure passes through the slits and arrives at a detector plate. The probabalistic nature of the absorption arises from their being a huge number of potential absorbers, each with a very low probability of absorbing. Thus absorption will depend on the local magnitude of the structure.