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I. Dynamical Reduction Theories: Changing Quantum Theory so the Statevector Represents Reality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

GianCarlo Ghirardi  and
Philip Pearle
GianCarlo Ghirardi
Affiliation:
University of Trieste and Hamilton College
Philip Pearle
Affiliation:
University of Trieste and Hamilton College
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Extract

We dedicate these papers to the memory of John Bell, whose contributions to, support for, and encouragement of the research program described here has meant more than words can say to those involved in it.

In Schrödinger’s “cat paradox” example, a nucleus which has a 50% probability of decaying within an hour is coupled to a cat by a “hellish contraption” which, if it detects the decay, will kill the cat. If we take the point of view that what we see around us is real, what occurs in reality is one of the two following evolutions :

(—> means “evolves in an hour into“).

According to Schrödinger’s equation, the evolution of the statevector describing this situation is

The right hand side of Eq. (1.2) does not correspond to either the reality on the right hand side of (1.1a) nor to the reality on the right hand side of (1.1b).

Type
Part II. John S. Bell Session: State Vector Reduction
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1990 , Issue 2: Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers 1990 , 1990 , pp. 19 - 33
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1991

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Footnotes

1

One of us (P.P.) would like to acknowledge the hospitality of Prof. Abdus Salam, the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNESCO, as well as financial support from Hamilton College, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, and the Consorzio per l’Incremento degli Studi e delle Richerche in Fisica dell’Università di Trieste.

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