Related papers: Relationship between the wave function and space
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,…
It has been widely thought that the wave function describes a real, physical field in a realist interpretation of quantum mechanics. In this paper, I present a new analysis of the field ontology for the wave function. First, I argue that…
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…
The conceptual problems in quantum mechanics -- related to the collapse of the wave function, the particle-wave duality, the meaning of measurement -- arise from the need to ascribe particle character to the wave function. As will be shown,…
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…
In this article we discuss the problem of finding an interpretation of quantum mechanics which provides an objective account of physical reality. In the first place we discuss the problem of interpretation and analyze the importance of such…
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…
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…
This is a non-technical presentation (in historical context) of the quantum theory that is strictly based on global unitarity. While the first part was written for a general readership, Sect. 5 may appear a bit provocative. I argue that the…
The quantum mechanics description of a physical object stretched in space and stable in time from the relativistic space-time properties point of view, introduced in special theory of relativity, is considered and analysed. The mathematical…
It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie--Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in…
This paper examines the physical meaning of the wave function in Bohmian mechanics (BM), addressing the debate between causal and nomological interpretations. While BM postulates particles with definite trajectories guided by the wave…
There is debate as to whether quantum field theory is, at bottom, a quantum theory of fields or particles. One can take a field approach to the theory, using wave functionals over field configurations, or a particle approach, using wave…
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…
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…
The term 'locality' is used in different contexts with different meanings. There have been claims that relational quantum mechanics is local, but it is not clear then how it accounts for the effects that go under the usual name of quantum…
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…
We propose a realistic and nonlocal interpretation for quantum mechanics, which requires new mathematical, physical and philosophical foundations for space-time. Our theory violates Bell's inequality. We also discuss the cat paradox.
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 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…