Related papers: The Copenhagen Interpretation as an Emergent Pheno…
The collapse challenge for interpretations of quantum mechanics is to build from first principles and your preferred interpretation a complete, observer-free quantum model of the described experiment (involving a photon and two screens),…
A new interpretation of quantum mechanics, similar to the Copenhagen interpretation, is developed from time-symmetry arguments and commonly held principles concerning time and causality. These principles, which are grounded in ideas outside…
As cutting-edge experiments display ever more extreme forms of non-classical behavior, the prevailing view on the interpretation of quantum mechanics appears to be gradually changing. A (highly unscientific) poll taken at the 1997 UMBC…
The nature of coarse graining is intuitively "obvious", but it is rather difficult to find explicit and calculable models of the coarse graining process (and the resulting entropy flow) discussed in the literature. What we would like to…
In the past both instrumentalism and empiricism have inspired certain pragmatic elements into the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. The relation of such pragmatisms with the correspondence principle is discussed. It is argued…
Why does such a successful theory like Quantum Mechanics have so many mysteries? The history of this theory is replete with dubious interpretations and controversies, and yet a knowledge of its predictions, however, contributed to the…
We clarify the role of the Born rule in the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics by deriving it from Bohr's doctrine of classical concepts, translated into the following mathematical statement: a quantum system described by a…
We consider a $\lambda \phi^4$ theory in Minkowski spacetime. We compute a "coarse grained effective action" by integrating out the field modes with wavelength shorter than a critical value. From this effective action we obtain the…
Self-interference embodies the essence of the particle-wave interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). According to the Copenhagen particle-wave interpretation of QM, self-interference by a double slit requires a large transverse coherence…
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, which first took shape in Bohr's landmark 1928 paper on complementarity, remains an enigma. Although many physicists are skeptical about the necessity of Bohr's philosophical conclusions,…
As a universal theory of physics, quantum mechanics must assign states to every level of description of a system -- from a full microscopic description, all the way up to an effective macroscopic characterization -- and also to describe the…
We briefly review a number of major features of the approach to quantum measurement theory based on environment-induced decoherence of the measuring apparatus, and summarize our observations in the form of a couple of general principles…
Quantum Mechanics (QM) stands alone as a (very) successful physical theory, but the meaning of its variables and the status of many quantities in the mathematical formalism is obscure. This unique situation prompted the need for attribution…
We provide an alternative approach to the decoherence-by-environment paradigm in the field of the quantum measurement process and the appearance of a classical world. In contrast to the decoherence approach we argue that the transition from…
We formulate a ''minimal'' interpretational scheme for fairly general (minisuperspace) quantum cosmological models. Admitting as few exact mathematical structure as is reasonably possible at the fundamental level, we apply approximate…
In this chapter, we will take a trip around several hot-spots where Bohmian mechanics and its capacity to describe the microscopic reality, even in the absence of measurements, can be harnessed as computational tools, in order to help in…
A pedagogical introduction is given to the quantum mechanics of closed systems, most generally the universe as a whole. Quantum mechanics aims at predicting the probabilities of alternative coarse-grained time histories of a closed system.…
The origin of the phenomenological deterministic laws that approximately govern the quasiclassical domain of familiar experience is considered in the context of the quantum mechanics of closed systems such as the universe as a whole. We…
Measurement in quantum mechanics is generally described as an irreversible process that perturbs the wavefunction describing a quantum system. In this work we establish a formal connection between the measurement description within the…
Sorkin has introduced a new, observer independent, interpretation of quantum mechanics that can give a successful realist account of the 'quantum microworld' as well as explaining how classicality emerges at the level of observable events…