On the Classical Limit of Quantum Mechanics

E. L. Hill

Jorge Bernal, A. Martín-Ruiz, J. C. García-Melgarejo

Qian Shang-Wu

By comparison between equations of motion of geometrical optics(GO)and that of classical statistical mechanics(CSM),we find that there should be an analogy between GO and CSM instead of GO and classical mechanics (CM).Furthermore,by comparison between the classical limit(CL)of quantum mechanics(QM)and CSM,we find that CL of QM is CSM not CM,hence we demonstrate that QM is a natural generalization of CSM instead of CM.

James T. Cushing

The ubiquity of chaos in classical mechanics (CM), as opposed to the situation in standard quantum mechanics (QM), might be taken as speaking against QM being the fundamental theory of physical phenomena. Bohmian mechanics (BM), as a formulation of quantum theory, may clarify both the existence of chaos in the quantum domain and the nature of the classical limit. Two interesting possibilities are (i) that CM and classical chaos are included in and underwritten by quantum mechanics (BM) or (ii) that BM and CM simply possess a common region of (noninclusive) overlap. In the latter case, neither CM nor QM alone would be sufficient, even in principle, to account for all of the physical phenomena we encounter. In this talk I shall summarize and discuss the implications of some recent work on chaos and on the classical limit within the framework of BM.

Dipankar Home

Partha Ghose

In spite of its popularity, it has not been possible to vindicate the conventional wisdom that classical mechanics is a limiting case of quantum mechanics. The purpose of the present paper is to offer an alternative point of view in which quantum mechanics emerges as a limiting case of classical mechanics in which the classical system is decoupled from its environment.