Wave Mechanics III: The Quantum Oscillator

Lajos Jánossy, Maria Ziegler-Náray

Jeffrey Alan Barrett

Hugh Everett III's pure wave mechanics is a deterministic physical theory with no probabilities. He nevertheless sought to show how his theory might be understood as making the same statistical predictions as the standard collapse formulation of quantum mechanics. We will consider Everett's argument for pure wave mechanics, how it depends on the notion of branch typicality, and the relationship between the predictions of pure wave mechanics and the standard quantum probabilities.

Arno Böhm

Paul F. Endres, David J. Wilson

Quantum calculations of the dynamics of a Morse oscillator with a Gaussian initial wave packet have been performed. As previously observed in other simple oscillators the classical and quantum expectation values for the coordinate exhibit significantly different behaviors, especially after the first few cycles. Some theories of chemical kinetics require the classical-mechanical calculation of lifetimes which may be quite long compared to vibrational periods. These theories deserve re-examination in view of the dynamical behavior observed in the present work.

Arno Böhm