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THE MEANING OF DECOHERENCE AND A NEW INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM MECHANICS

Guan Hong

Published Jan 1, 2002• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

The origin and substance of a new interpretation of quantum mechanics——“decohering histories interpretation”——are introduced. The implications of this progress on the development of quantum theory are discussed.

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Within the last decade, significant progress has been made towards a consistent and complete reformulation of the Copenhagen interpretation (an interpretation consisting in a formulation of the experimental aspects of physics in terms of the basic formalism; it is consistent if free from internal contradiction and complete if it provides precise predictions for all experiments). The main steps involved decoherence (the transition from linear superpositions of macroscopic states to a mixing), Griffiths histories describing the evolution of quantum properties, a convenient logical structure for dealing with histories, and also some progress in semiclassical physics, which was made possible by new methods. The main outcome is a theory of phenomena, viz., the classically meaningful properties of a macroscopic system. It shows in particular how and when determinism is valid. This theory can be used to give a deductive form to measurement theory, which now covers some cases that were initially devised as counterexamples against the Copenhagen interpretation. These theories are described, together with their applications to some key experiments and some of their consequences concerning epistemology.
Of all the many rival interpretations of quantum mechanics, none is more important or influential than the Copenhagen interpretation. Unfortunately, there is no one Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. If one uses the expression, and everyone does, one should not think of the Copenhagen interpretation as a single consistent interpretation of the theory. Philosophers of physics tend to use the expression ‘the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics’ as a label covering a variety of different interpretations all of which either originate with Niels Bohr or were invented by him, his colleagues and guests at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen beginning in the middle 1920s. Perhaps one should say that the Copenhagen interpretation in this diffuse sense goes back farther than this, back even before the rise of the new quantum mechanics. Heisenberg tells the story of a boat trip he, Bohr, and some friends took from Copenhagen to the island of Fyn around the time when the then new quantum mechanics was being developed. Bohr, ‘full of the new interpretation of quantum theory’, talked of ‘the difficulties of language, of the limitations of all our means of expressing ourselves’ and of how these limitations had been expressed ‘in the foundation of atomic theory in a mathematically lucid way’. ‘Finally,’ Heisenberg ends the story, ‘one of the friends remarked drily, “But, Niels, this is not really new, you said exactly the same ten years ago”
A survey is made of the hitherto proposed answers to the following crucial questions arising in the physical interpretation of the mathematical formalism of wave mechanics: (I) What is the meaning of the dynamical variables and of their eigenvalues? (II) What is the meaning of the wave function? (III) What is the nature and origin of Heisenberg's uncertainty relations? (IV) What is the nature of the systems dealt with by wave mechanics? Taking into account the interpretations that have been proposed in the last few years, a surprisingly large number of answers is found. The present situation in quantum mechanics is compared with similar crises in the past history of physics. The mere multiplicity of consistent interpretations of quantum mechanics is regarded as a warning against the dogmatic adherence to any one of them, to the exclusion of new possibilities.