On the Common Structure of Bohmian Mechanics and the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber Theory

Abstract

Bohmian mechanics and the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber theory provide opposite resolutions of the quantum measurement problem: the former postulates additional variables (the particle positions) besides the wave function, whereas the latter implements spontaneous collapses of the wave function by a nonlinear and stochastic modification of Schrödinger's equation. Still, both theories, when understood appropriately, share the following structure: They are ultimately not about wave functions but about ``matter'' moving in space, represented by either particle trajectories, fields on space-time, or a discrete set of space-time points. The role of the wave function then is to govern the motion of the matter.

35 pages LaTeX, 1 figure; v4 minor additions, v2 major revision

References in corpus (4)

• Bohmian Mechanics and Quantum Field Theory
• On Spontaneous Wave Function Collapse and Quantum Field Theory
• On the Role of Density Matrices in Bohmian Mechanics
• Are All Particles Real?

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