The theory of (exclusively) local beables

DOI10.1007/S10701-010-9495-2zbMATH Open1222.81077arXiv0909.4553OpenAlexW3101403708MaRDI QIDQ720000FDOQ720000

Authors: Travis Norsen 

Publication date: 13 October 2011

Published in: Foundations of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: It is shown how, starting with the de Broglie - Bohm pilot-wave theory, one can construct a new theory of the sort envisioned by several of QM's founders: a Theory of Exclusively Local Beables (TELB). In particular, the usual quantum mechanical wave function (a function on a high-dimensional configuration space) is not among the beables posited by the new theory. Instead, each particle has an associated ``pilot-wave field (living in physical space). A number of additional fields (also fields on physical space) maintain what is described, in ordinary quantum theory, as ``entanglement. The theory allows some interesting new perspective on the kind of causation involved in pilot-wave theories in general. And it provides also a concrete example of an empirically viable quantum theory in whose formulation the wave function (on configuration space) does not appear -- i.e., it is a theory according to which nothing corresponding to the configuration space wave function need actually exist. That is the theory's emph{raison d'etre} and perhaps its only virtue. Its vices include the fact that it only reproduces the empirical predictions of the ordinary pilot-wave theory (equivalent, of course, to the predictions of ordinary quantum theory) for spinless non-relativistic particles, and only then for wave functions that are everywhere analytic. The goal is thus not to recommend the TELB proposed here as a replacement for ordinary pilot-wave theory (or ordinary quantum theory), but is rather to illustrate (with a crude first stab) that it might be possible to construct a plausible, empirically viable TELB, and to recommend this as an interesting and perhaps-fruitful program for future research.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/0909.4553

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zbMATH Keywords

Bell's theoremBohmian mechanicsEinsteinlocal beablespilot-wave theory

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05) Quantum measurement theory, state operations, state preparations (81P15)

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Cited In (19)

• A new pilot-wave model for quantum field theory
• Inertial Trajectories in de Broglie-Bohm Quantum Theory: An Unexpected Problem
• A local \(\psi \)-epistemic retrocausal hidden-variable model of Bell correlations with wavefunctions in physical space
• Causality, measurement, and elementary interactions
• Weak measurement and Bohmian conditional wave functions
• The wave-function as a multi-field
• A minimalist pilot-wave model for quantum electrodynamics
• Why scientific realists should reject the second dogma of quantum mechanics
• Bohmian mechanics: realism and the ``box experiment
• What is it like to be a relativistic GRW theory? Or: quantum mechanics and relativity, still in conflict after all these years
• Replacing the singlet spinor of the EPR-B experiment in the configuration space with two single-particle spinors in physical space
• Can the wave function in configuration space be replaced by single-particle wave functions in physical space?
• One world, one beable
• Implications of a deeper level explanation of the deBroglie-Bohm version of quantum mechanics
• Wave-functionalism
• A pilot-wave approach to the many-body problem: beyond the small entanglement approximation
• Is gravitational entanglement evidence for the quantization of spacetime?
• Introduction: Space-time and the wave function
• Laws of nature and the reality of the wave function

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