Related papers: Wavefunction branching: when you can't tell pure s…
The act of measurement on a quantum state is supposed to "collapse" the state into one of several eigenstates of the operator corresponding to the observable being measured. This measurement process is sometimes described as outside…
Perhaps the quantum state represents information about reality, and not reality directly. Wave function collapse is then possibly no more mysterious than a Bayesian update of a probability distribution given new data. We consider models for…
A novel two-tiered organization of the microworld is presented, in which only the fundamental quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics (electrons, photons, quarks, etc.) are true quantum waves, exhibiting linear…
Much of the discussion of decoherence has been in terms of a particle moving in one dimension that is placed in an initial superposition state (a Schr\"{o}dinger "cat" state) corresponding to two widely separated wave packets. Decoherence…
In a quantum measurement process, classical information about the measured system spreads throughout the environment. Meanwhile, quantum information about the system becomes inaccessible to local observers. Here we prove a result about…
In quantum theory particles are represented as wave packets. Shock wave analysis of quantum equations of motion shows that wave function representation in general and wave packet description in particular contains discontinuities due to a…
Wave-particle duality is one of the fundamental properties of matter and at the same time, one of the mysteries of modern physics. In this paper, we propose and analyze a new interpretation of the wave-particle duality, and propose a new…
Reduction is shown to be a possible consequence of the basic principles of quantum mechanics, involving no branching of the quantum state of the universe. The key feature of a measurement is attributed to the creation of macroscopic germs…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
An differential equation for wave functions is proposed, which is equivalent to Schr\"{o}dinger's wave equation and can be used to determine energy-level gaps of quantum systems. Contrary to Schr\"{o}dinger's wave equation, this equation is…
We criticize the current standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, review its paradoxes with attention to non-locality, and conclude that a reconsideration of it must be made. We underline the incompatibility of the conceptions ascribed…
According to general relativity, trapping surfaces and horizons are classical causal structures that arise in systems with sharply defined energy and corresponding gravitational radius. The latter concept can be extended to a quantum…
The physical states of matter and fields are represented in the quantum theory with complex valued wavefunctions, or more generally by quantum states in an abstract linear vector space. Determining the physical nature of wavefunctions…
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 quantum-mechanical wave function is complex, but all observations are real, expressible through expectation values and transition matrix elements that involve the wave functions. It can be useful to separate at the outset the amplitude…
Self-interactions and interaction with the environment tend to push quantum systems toward states of maximal entanglement. This is a definition of decoherence. We argue that these maximally entangled states fall into the well-defined…
We derive a family of inequalities involving different phase-space distributions of a quantum state which have to be fulfilled by any classical state. The violation of these inequalities is a clear signature of nonclassicality. Our approach…
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…
Except for the universe, all quantum systems are open, and according to quantum state diffusion theory, many systems localize to wave packets in the neighborhood of phase space points. This is due to decoherence from the interaction with…
Quantum states are described by wave functions whose phases cannot be directly measured, but which play a vital role in quantum effects such as interference and entanglement. The loss of the relative phase information, termed decoherence,…