We outline a proposal for an experimental test of Everett’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics that could potentially verify the existence of a multiverse. This proposal is based on a quantum field theory formulation of many-worlds through the path integral formalism and a careful choice of the vacuum state.
The interpretation of measurements in quantum mechanics has been disputed for over a century. The scope of this study is to find an experimental test of Everett’s many-worlds interpretation that could potentially verify the existence of a multiverse. Our proposal is based on a quantum field theory formulation of the many-worlds interpretation through the path integral formalism and a careful choice of the vacuum state. By generalizing the earlier quantum suicide thought experiment to quantum field theory, we find that the many-worlds interpretation implies a measurable change in the lifetime of elementary particles.
Since the 1970s, the Everett-Wheeler many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of Quantum Mechanics (1955) has been much in the news. One wonders about the worlds in question, their branches, their splittings, their number. It is most often ignored that this language is not that of Everett, whom Wheeler very quickly stopped supporting. Moreover, for some interpreters, the real meaning of Everett ideas is not the coexistence of many worlds, but the existence of a single quantum one. In this context, what should we think of attempts to verify Everett thesis? What about the connexion between MWI and the cosmological multiverse? How to understand the links between the quantum world and the classical one? This article tries to answer some of these questions.
We propose a set of simple quantum optics experiments that test for an entirely new domain of physical laws that govern how an individual's conscious experience traverses the multiverse within Everett's many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. These experiments imply an exception to the Born rule in a proposed ''observer-specific'' reference frame. These experiments must be done by you, the reader. If it is performed by anyone else, other than you, the reader, you will observe that the person performing the experiment will observe an outcome that is not special, interesting, or different from what is already known about quantum mechanics. To the best of our knowledge, this would be the first ever modern experiment that is only meaningful if the experiment is performed by you, the reader, and cannot be inferred from the results of another experimenter. Therefore, since each individual must perform this test on his or her own, we outline a set of real experiments that can be easily performed such that as many people as possible can individually verify this for themselves. We do not know or specify what specific physical laws exist within this ''observer-specific'' domain, but come up with a number of different tests to cover as many theories as possible.