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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 14: Quantum Mechanics

AGPhil 14.1: Talk

Thursday, March 21, 2024, 11:30–12:00, PTB SR AvHB

A two-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics — •Hans Christian Öttinger — Quantum Center and Department of Materials, ETH Zürich, HCP F 43.1, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland

The stochastic nature of quantum mechanics is more naturally reflected in a bilinear two-process representation of density matrices rather than in squared wave functions. This proposition comes with a remarkable change of the entanglement mechanism: entanglement does not originate from superpositions of wave functions, but results from the bilinear structure of density matrices. Quantum interference is not an additive superposition mechanism, but rather a multiplicative phenomenon. A strict superselection rule, which can be motivated by obtaining quantum mechanics as a limit of quantum field theory (Fock space), requires that the content of fundamental particles in quantum systems is well-defined. The proposed bilinear representation of density matrices is given in terms of two stochastic jump processes.

These ideas are illustrated for the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen and double-slit experiments. The expression of the stochastic nature of quantum mechanics in terms of random variables rather than their probability distributions facilitates an ontological viewpoint and leads us to a two-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Keywords: interpretation of quantum mechanics; entanglement mechanism; strong superselection rule; stochastic unravelings; ontology