Related papers: How does Quantum Uncertainty Emerge from Determini…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
Quantum mechanics is derived from the principle that the universe contain as much variety as possible, in the sense of maximizing the distinctiveness of each subsystem. The quantum state of a microscopic system is defined to correspond to…
Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse…
Bohmian mechanics and the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber theory provide opposite resolutions of the quantum measurement problem: the former postulates additional variables (the particle positions) besides the wave function, whereas the latter…
Bohmian mechanics is an alternative interpretation of quantum mechanics. We outline the main characteristics of its non-relativistic formulation. Most notably it does provide a simple solution to the infamous measurement problem of quantum…
The de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory asserts that a complete characterization of an $N$-particle system is given by its wave function together with the (at-all-times-defined) positions of the particles, with the wave function always…
We consider the possibility that all particles in the world are fundamentally identical, i.e., belong to the same species. Different masses, charges, spins, flavors, or colors then merely correspond to different quantum states of the same…
A general formulation of classical relativistic particle mechanics is presented, with an emphasis on the fact that superluminal velocities and nonlocal interactions are compatible with relativity. Then a manifestly relativistic-covariant…
We provide a decision-theoretic framework for dealing with uncertainty in quantum mechanics. This uncertainty is two-fold: on the one hand there may be uncertainty about the state the quantum system is in, and on the other hand, as is…
The most peculiar, specifically quantum, features of quantum mechanics --- quantum nonlocality, indeterminism, interference of probabilities, quantization, wave function collapse during measurement --- are explained on a logical-geometrical…
What is the quantum state of the universe? That is the central question of quantum cosmology. This essay describes the place of that quantum state in a final theory governing the regularities exhibited universally by all physical systems in…
It is often argued that measurable predictions of Bohmian mechanics cannot be distinguished from those of a theory with arbitrarily modified particle velocities satisfying the same equivariance equation. By considering the wave function of…
Quantum gravity aims to describe gravity in quantum mechanical terms. How exactly this needs to be done remains an open question. Various proposals have been put on the table, such as canonical quantum gravity, loop quantum gravity, string…
According to quantum theory, pure physical states correspond to equivalence classes of state vectors, where any two members of one class differ by a complex factor. The point is that such a factor does not change the probability for the…
A source of much difficulty and confusion in the interpretation of quantum mechanics is a ``naive realism about operators.'' By this we refer to various ways of taking too seriously the notion of operator-as-observable, and in particular to…
Bohmian mechanics (BM) draws a picture of nature, which is completely different from that drawn by standard quantum mechanics (SQM): Particles are at any time at a definite position, and the universe evolves deterministically.…
The main distinction between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics is the lack in the latter of a full mechanical determinism: different final states can arise from the same physical state, after the measurement. No hidden variable is…
It is often stated that quantum mechanics only makes statistical predictions and that a quantum state is described by the various probability distributions associated with it. Can we describe a quantum state completely in terms of…
The biggest and most lasting among David Bohm's (1917-1992) many achievements is to have proposed a picture of reality that explains the empirical rules of quantum mechanics. This picture, known as pilot wave theory or Bohmian mechanics…
Bohmian mechanics offers a deterministic alternative to conventional quantum theory through well-defined particle trajectories. While successful in nonrelativistic contexts, its extension to curved spacetime-and hence quantum…