Observers and Locality in Everett Quantum Field Theory

Mark A. Rubin

Hitoshi Inamori

It is generally accepted that Everett's theory of quantum mechanics cannot be experimentally tested as such experiment would involve operations on the observer which are beyond our current technology. We propose an alternative to test Everett's theory which does not involve any operation on the observer. If we assume that the observer is of finite dimension, it is shown that Everett's theory leads to distinctive properties for the system being observed, and that such difference can be experimentally tested.

Daniele Tommasini

Simon W. Saunders

This chapter considers rather how Everett’s ideas relate to decoherence theory, and what difference that theory makes. The strange gap between the determinism of the Schrödinger equation and the indeterminism evident at the observational level is bridged by the so-called measurement postulates. The projection postulate is sometimes stated without the restriction to repeatability, but then it is very often false. Everett’s strategy to establish the conclusion was to show that a superposition of records of indeterminism could be obtained in this way, satisfying the Schrödinger equation – and specifically, records as could be encoded in a mechanical model. Everett took the thesis of psychophysical parallelism rather more to heart than did its author. Everett’s proposal was to use, as basis states, wavefunctions for centers of mass, as functions on three-dimensional space, well-localized in position and momentum.

Masanori Ohya, Igor Vasil'evich Volovich

Gregg S. Jaeger