English

How a wave function can collapse without violating Schroedinger's equation, and how to understand Born's rule

Quantum Physics 2012-07-23 v3

Abstract

It is often claimed that the collapse of the wave function and Born's rule to interpret the square of the norm as a probability, have to be introduced as separate axioms in quantum mechanics besides the Schroedinger equation. Here we show that this is not true in certain models where quantum behavior can be attributed to underlying deterministic equations. It is argued that indeed the apparent spontaneous collapse of wave functions and Born's rule are features that strongly point towards determinism underlying quantum mechanics.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1112.1811,
  title  = {How a wave function can collapse without violating Schroedinger's equation, and how to understand Born's rule},
  author = {Gerard 't Hooft},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1112.1811},
  year   = {2012}
}

Comments

18 pages (including title page), one figure added. The revised version contains some more clarifications and references in response to remarks by a referee on an earlier version

R2 v1 2026-06-21T19:48:17.407Z