Related papers: Interaction-induced wavefunction collapse
The assumption that wave function collapse is induced by correlating interactions of the kind that constitute measurements leads to a stochastic collapse equation that does not require the introduction of any new physical constants and that…
Because quantum measurements have probabilistic outcomes they can seem to violate conservation laws in individual experiments. Despite these appearances, strict conservation of momentum, orbital angular momentum, and energy can be shown to…
We describe an experimental test of whether particle decay causes wave function collapse. The test uses interference between two well separated, but coherent, sources of vector mesons. The short-lived mesons decay before their wave…
The possibility of consistency between the basic quantum principles of quantum mechanics and wave function collapse is reexamined. A specific interpretation of environment is proposed for this aim and applied to decoherence. When the…
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…
A modified form of quantum mechanics which includes a new mechanism for wavefunction collapse is proposed. The collapse provides a solution to the quantum measurement problem. This modified quantum mechanics is shown to arise naturally from…
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…
The postulate of the collapse of the wave function stands between the microscopic, quantum world, and the macroscopic world. Because of this intermediate position, the collapse process cannot be examined with the formalism of the quantum…
It is shown that within a quantum system, the wave field has a (potential) energy content that can be exchanged with quantum particles. Energy conservation in quantum systems holds if potential energy is correctly taken to be a field…
We apply the formalism of quantum measurement theory to the idealized measurement of the position of a particle with an optical interferometer, finding that the backaction of counting entangled photons systematically collapses the…
Wavefunction collapse is usually seen as a discontinuous violation of the unitary evolution of a quantum system, caused by the observation. Moreover, the collapse appears to be nonlocal in a sense which seems at odds with General…
Aiming at providing an objective picture for the collapse process of wave function during measurement, further analysis about the quantum discontinuous motion is presented, when considering general relativity we show that the new motion is…
This paper critically considers the main interpretations of the wave function and offers an interpretation in which wave function is a consequence of subquantum processes taking place at the level of the organization of matter which…
A long-standing quantum-mechanical puzzle is whether the collapse of the wave function is a real physical process or simply an epiphenomenon. This puzzle lies at the heart of the measurement problem. One way to choose between the…
In this paper we examine some proposals to disprove the hypothesis that the interaction between mind and matter causes the collapse of the wave function, showing that such proposals are fundamentally flawed. We then describe a general…
We explain the collapse of the wavefunction with the notion that, in a measurement, the system observed nucleates a first order phase transition in the measuring device. The possible final states differ by the values of macroscopic…
The effect of quantum collapse and revival is a fascinating interference phenomenon. In this paper the phenomenon is demonstrated analytically and numerically for a simple system, a slightly anharmonic Hamiltonian. The initial wave-function…
Traditional textbook explanations of the Compton effect treat the photon electron interaction as a particle collision. This explanation is a pedagogical disaster, implying that sometimes interactions are particle-like whereas quantum…
The basic strategy underlying models of spontaneous wave function collapse (collapse models) is to modify the Schroedinger equation by including nonlinear stochastic terms, which tend to localize wave functions in space in a dynamical…
We give a twist to the assumption - discussed in various earlier works - that gravity plays a role in the collapse of the wave function. This time we discuss the contrary assumption that the collapse of the wave function plays a role in the…