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Pilot-Wave Theory without Nonlocality

Quantum Physics 2022-10-26 v2 History and Philosophy of Physics

Abstract

It is generally taken to be established that no local hidden-variable theory is possible. That conclusion applies if our world is a thread, where a thread is a world where particles follow trajectories, as in Pilot-Wave theory. But if our world is taken to be a set of threads locality can be recovered. Our world can be described by a many-threads theory, as defined by Jeffrey Barrett in the opening quote. Particles do not follow trajectories because a particle in our world is a set of elemental particles following different trajectories, each in a thread. The so-called elements of a superposition are construed as subsets in such a way that a particle in our world only has definite position if all its set-theoretic elements are at corresponding positions in each thread. Wave function becomes a three-dimensional density distribution of a particle's subset measures, the stuff of an electron probability cloud. Current Pilot-Wave theory provides a non-relativistic dynamics for the elemental particles, approximated by Many Interacting Worlds theory. EPR-Bell non-locality does not apply because the relevant measurement outcomes in the absolute elsewhere of an observer are always in superposition.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2209.05159,
  title  = {Pilot-Wave Theory without Nonlocality},
  author = {Paul Tappenden},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.05159},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

To appear in Foundations of Physics

R2 v1 2026-06-28T01:07:09.092Z