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Born's Rule for Arbitrary Cauchy Surfaces

Mathematical Physics 2020-03-27 v3 math.MP Quantum Physics

Abstract

Suppose that particle detectors are placed along a Cauchy surface Σ\Sigma in Minkowski space-time, and consider a quantum theory with fixed or variable number of particles (i.e., using Fock space or a subspace thereof). It is straightforward to guess what Born's rule should look like for this setting: The probability distribution of the detected configuration on Σ\Sigma has density ψΣ2|\psi_\Sigma|^2, where ψΣ\psi_\Sigma is a suitable wave function on Σ\Sigma, and the operation 2|\cdot|^2 is suitably interpreted. We call this statement the "curved Born rule." Since in any one Lorentz frame, the appropriate measurement postulates referring to constant-tt hyperplanes should determine the probabilities of the outcomes of any conceivable experiment, they should also imply the curved Born rule. This is what we are concerned with here: deriving Born's rule for Σ\Sigma from Born's rule in one Lorentz frame (along with a collapse rule). We describe two ways of defining an idealized detection process, and prove for one of them that the probability distribution coincides with ψΣ2|\psi_\Sigma|^2. For this result, we need two hypotheses on the time evolution: that there is no interaction faster than light, and that there is no propagation faster than light. The wave function ψΣ\psi_\Sigma can be obtained from the Tomonaga--Schwinger equation, or from a multi-time wave function by inserting configurations on Σ\Sigma. Thus, our result establishes in particular how multi-time wave functions are related to detection probabilities.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1706.07074,
  title  = {Born's Rule for Arbitrary Cauchy Surfaces},
  author = {Matthias Lienert and Roderich Tumulka},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1706.07074},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

53 pages LaTeX, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T20:25:43.243Z