Related papers: Wavefunction collapse through backaction of counti…
According to the no-signaling theorem, the nonlocal collapse of the wavefunction of an entangled particle by the measurement on its twin particle at a remote location cannot be used to send useful information. Given that experiments on…
We discuss the particle method in quantum mechanics which provides an exact scheme to calculate the time-dependent wavefunction from a single-valued continuum of trajectories where two spacetime points are linked by at most a single orbit.…
In this work we experimentally demonstrate the quantum interference of force effect using pairs of entangled photons. Although photons are massless particles, they have linear momentum, and our experiments show that the quantum…
The standard approach to quantum measurements is to assume that they lead to effectively instantaneous collapse of the quantum state. However, if we assume that we are unable to enforce at what exact moment of time the measurement occurs…
A textbook interpretation of quantum physics is that quantum objects can be described in a particle or a wave picture, depending on the operations and measurements performed. Beyond this widely held believe, we demonstrate in this…
The quantum analogue of Galileo's leaning tower experiment is revisited using wave packets evolving under the gravitational potential. We first calculate the position detection probabilities for particles projected upwards against gravity…
Effects associated in quantum mechanics with a divisible probability wave are explained as physically real consequences of the equal but opposite reaction of the apparatus as a particle is measured. Taking as illustration a Mach-Zehnder…
We propose an effective non-relativistic framework in which wave-function collapse emerges as a deterministic dynamical instability induced by gravitational self-interaction and regulated by short-distance repulsion. The dynamics is…
A fundamental principle of quantum theory, clearly manifested in the two-slit experiment, is that for any alternatives that cannot be distinguished by measurement physical predictions are obtained by summation of their amplitudes. In…
I review arguments demonstrating how the concept of "particle" numbers arises in the form of equidistant energy eigenvalues of coupled harmonic oscillators representing free fields. Their quantum numbers (numbers of nodes of the wave…
A more detailed analysis of the measurement problem continues to support the position taken by Shimony and the author that collapse of the wave function takes place in an objective manner in the rhodopsin molecule of the retina. This casts…
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…
One of the main postulates of quantum mechanics is that measurements destroy quantum coherence (wave function collapse). Recently it was discovered that in a many-body system dilute local measurements still preserve some coherence across…
A model of quantum measurement, illustrated using the spin--boson model, is formulated in terms of a cascading pair of quantum phase transitions. The first produces the desired superposition of macroscopic responses to the microscopic state…
Theories of spontaneous wavefunction collapse offer an explanation of the possible breakdown of quantum mechanics for macroscopic systems. However, the challenge of resolving predicted collapse signatures above background noise has…
Four problematic circumstances are considered, involving models which describe dynamical wavefunction collapse toward energy eigenstates, for which it is shown that wavefunction collapse of macroscopic objects does not work properly. In one…
Using a basic Mach-Zehnder interferometer, we demonstrate experimentally the measurement of the photonic de Broglie wavelength of an entangled photon pair (a biphoton) generated by spontaneous parametric down-conversion. The observed…
To quantify the effect of decoherence in quantum measurements, it is desirable to measure not merely the square modulus of the spatial wavefunction, but the entire density matrix, whose phases carry information about momentum and how pure…
We propose, as an alternative theory of quantum mechanics, a relativistically covariant variational principle (VP) capable of describing both wavefunction collapse and, as an appropriate limiting case, evolution of the wavefunction…
I argue that there is a straightforward way to understand the occurrence of wavefunction collapses or 'quantum events' in relational approaches to quantum mechanics: we necessarily encounter a discontinuity in our description when a system…