Related papers: Bohmian Mechanics and the Meaning of the Wave Func…
The ontological aspect of Bohmian mechanics, as a hidden-variable theory that provides us with an objective description of a quantum world without observers, is widely known. Yet its practicality is getting more and more acceptance and…
This paper focuses on a constructive treatment of the mathematical formalism of quantum theory and a possible role of constructivist philosophy in resolving the foundational problems of quantum mechanics, particularly, the controversy over…
We explain why, in a configuration space that is multiply connected, i.e., whose fundamental group is nontrivial, there are several quantum theories, corresponding to different choices of topological factors. We do this in the context of…
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,…
The Bohmian formulation of quantum mechanics is used in order to describe the measurement process in an intuitive way without a reduction postulate in the framework of a deterministic single system theory. Thereby the motion of the hidden…
It was recently pointed out (and demonstrated experimentally) by Lundeen et al. that the wave function of a particle (more precisely, the wave function possessed by each member of an ensemble of identically-prepared particles) can be…
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…
I address the question whether the wave function in quantum theory exists as a real (ontic) quantity or not. For this purpose, I discuss the essentials of the quantum formalism and emphasize the central role of the superposition principle.…
We derive for Bohmian mechanics topological factors for quantum systems with a multiply-connected configuration space Q. These include nonabelian factors corresponding to what we call holonomy-twisted representations of the fundamental…
The quantum formalism is a ``measurement'' formalism--a phenomenological formalism describing certain macroscopic regularities. We argue that it can be regarded, and best be understood, as arising from Bohmian mechanics, which is what…
Mermin's "shut up and calculate!" somehow summarizes the most widely accepted view on quantum mechanics. This conception has led to a rather constraining way to think and understand the quantum world. Nonetheless, a closer look at the…
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the Bohmian formulation of quantum mechanics. It starts with a historical review of the difficulties found by Louis de Broglie, David Bohm, and John S. Bell to convince the scientific…
Bohmian mechanics is a causal interpretation of quantum mechanics in which particles describe trajectories guided by the wave function. The dynamics in the vicinity of nodes of the wave function, usually called vortices, is regular if they…
Is the wave function a physical reality traveling through our apparatus? Is it a real wave, or it is only a mathematical tool for calculating probabilities of results of measurements? Different interpretations of the quantum mechanics (QM)…
Quantum mechanics is an outstandingly successful description of nature, underpinning fields from biology through chemistry to physics. At its heart is the quantum wavefunction, the central tool for describing quantum systems. Yet it is…
The reality of Bohm's intellectual journey is very different from what is often claimed by the proponents of "Bohmian Mechanics" and others as we will explain in this paper. He did not believe a mechanical explanation of quantum phenomena…
Many recent results suggest that quantum theory is about information, and that quantum theory is best understood as arising from principles concerning information and information processing. At the same time, by far the simplest version of…
Following the spirit of de Broglie and Einstein, we think the concepts of matter and radiation can be unified. We know a particle propagates like a wave; its motion is described by certain wave equations. At this point, it is not clear what…
It is the matter of fact that quantum mechanics operates with notions that are not determined in the frame of the mechanics' formalism. Among them we can call the notion of "wave-particle" (that, however, does not appear in both classical…
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…