Related papers: Constructibility of the universal wave function
The most puzzling issue in the foundations of quantum mechanics is perhaps that of the status of the wave function of a system in a quantum universe. Is the wave function objective or subjective? Does it represent the physical state of the…
According to mathematical constructivism, a mathematical object can exist only if there is a way to compute (or "construct") it; so, what is non-computable is non-constructive. In the example of the quantum model, whose Fock states are…
Discussion of the necessity to use the constructive mathematics as the formalism of quantum theory for systems with many particles.
The wave function in quantum mechanics presents an interesting challenge to our understanding of the physical world. In this paper, I show that the wave function can be understood as four intrinsic relations on physical space. My account…
We outline how Bohmian mechanics works: how it deals with various issues in the foundations of quantum mechanics and how it is related to the usual quantum formalism. We then turn to some objections to Bohmian mechanics, for example the…
A century after the discovery of quantum mechanics, the meaning of quantum mechanics still remains elusive. This is largely due to the puzzling nature of the wave function, the central object in quantum mechanics. If we are realists about…
I address the question whether the wave function in quantum theory exists as a real (ontic) quantity or not. For this purpose, I discuss the essentials of the quantum formalism and emphasize the central role of the superposition principle.…
When the universe is treated as a quantum system, it is described by a wave function. This wave function is a function not only of the matter fields, but also of spacetime. The no-boundary proposal is the idea that the wave function should…
We investigate the meaning of the wave function by analyzing the mass and charge density distributions of a quantum system. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density distributing in space,…
There are reasons to doubt that making sense of the wave function (other than as a probability algorithm) will help with the project of making sense of quantum mechanics. The consistency of the quantum-mechanical correlation laws with the…
We specify the semiclassical no-boundary wave function of the universe without relying on a functional integral of any kind. The wave function is given as a sum of specific saddle points of the dynamical theory that satisfy conditions of…
Although quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories, there has been a long-standing debate about the interpretation of the wave function---the central object of the theory. Two prominent views are that (i) it…
This chapter reexamines wave function realism (WFR) through the lens of phenomenology. We begin by situating WFR within the broader debate about the ontology of the quantum state and the temptation to "read off" metaphysics from…
The meaning of the wave function of the Universe was actively discussed in 1980s. In most works on quantum cosmology it is accepted that the wave function is a probability amplitude for the Universe to have some space geometry, or to be…
The ontological status of the quantum wavefunction remains one of the most debated questions in quantum theory. While epistemic interpretations regard the wavefunction as a reflection of our knowledge or beliefs, ontic interpretations treat…
Unlike mathematics, in which the notion of truth might be abstract, in physics, the emphasis must be placed on algorithmic procedures for obtaining numerical results subject to the experimental verifiability. For, a physical science is…
We introduce a formulation of combined systems in orthodox non-relativistic quantum mechanics, mathematically equivalent to the usual one. For context and larger issues, see http://euclid.unh.edu/~jjohnson/axiomatics.html and…
Universality of quantum mechanics -- its applicability to physical systems of quite different nature and scales -- indicates that quantum behavior can be a manifestation of general mathematical properties of systems containing…
It is proved the mathematical theorem, that the wave function describes the statistical ensemble of particles, but not a single particle. Supposition, that the wave function describes a single particle appears to be incompatible with…
The nonrelativistic wavefunction of a quantum state that contains all its information is derived directly from the effective quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics, which are the fundamental elements of reality of the…