Many-Worlds and Schroedinger's First Quantum Theory

Abstract

Schroedinger's first proposal for the interpretation of quantum mechanics was based on a postulate relating the wave function on configuration space to charge density in physical space. Schroedinger apparently later thought that his proposal was empirically wrong. We argue here that this is not the case, at least for a very similar proposal with charge density replaced by mass density. We argue that when analyzed carefully this theory is seen to be an empirically adequate many-worlds theory and not an empirically inadequate theory describing a single world. Moreover, this formulation--Schroedinger's first quantum theory--can be regarded as a formulation of the many-worlds view of quantum mechanics that is ontologically clearer than Everett's.

25 pages LaTeX, no figures; v2 minor improvements

References in corpus (2)

• A Relativistic Version of the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber Model
• On the Common Structure of Bohmian Mechanics and the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber Theory

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