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History 181B:  Modern Physics
Class 43 (5/2/01)
Interpreting quantum mechanics
(Guest Lecture:  Prof. Guido Bacciagaluppi, Dept. of Philosophy)
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Outline Interpreting quantum mechanics

     Establishing the Copenhagen Interpretation
     The rise of outsider views:  Schrödinger, de Broglie, Einstein
     Genuine physical questions:  analogy to special relativity

The measurement problem:  classical apparatus in QM

     Step 1:  Recovering a classical system
     Step 2:  Coupling the apparatus to a quantum system
     Problem:  applying QM to its own foundations doesn't give you what you started with

     3 aspects of the problem
          Linearity or non-linearity
          Determinism or indeterminism
          Locality or non-locality (and its consequences for consistency with SR)

     Decoherence:  in macroscopic systems, interference seems to vanish

     Three ways of dealing with the problem

          Nature makes a choice
               Non-linear, possibly indeterministic, possibly non-local
               Spontaneous collapse:  GRW

          QM is a theory of averages
               Definitely non-local
               Pilot waves, hidden variables:  de Broglie, Bohm

          Many worlds
               No changes to the physics, empirically indistinguishable from QM
               A different way of understanding decoherence:  Everett and Wheeler

Names and terms
Primary Secondary
John von Neumann (1903-1957)
quantum/classical split (object/subject split)
linearity (superposition)
two-slit experiment
one-slit experiment
5th Solvay Conference (1927)
Ghirardi, Rimini, and Weber (1986)
Copyright © Cathryn Carson 2001