Hi all,
today we have Patrick Dürr visiting from Oxford. See below for his title and abstract.
Best,
-joe
Title: \Psi Wars - A New Hope
Abstract: Vis-à-vis the hassle in the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM), i.e. its statistical character, the measurement problem, quantum entanglement and their joint culmination in the EPR-thought experiment, the question arises whether QM is complete: Does every element of reality possess a counterpart in the theory? Proponents of Bohmian Mechanics (BM) contest this. They attempt to complete QM by augmenting the standard formalism: BM posits particles that always occupy definite positions and a dynamical law for the particle trajectories. BM claims to resolve some of the quantum conundrums.
The first part of my talk highlights two core problems of BM: its non-locality, which severely impedes the formulation of relativistic variants of BM, and various conceptual problems involcing BM’s dynamics, first and foremost its redundancy, respectively. I'll argue that by jettisoning the assumption that particles follow continuous trajectories, one arrives at a superior Bohmian theory, “stochastic BM” (sBM). It retains all of orthodox BM’s virtues, but eschews its shortcomings. sBM is a many-worlds theory, according to which the universe is performing a random walk through configuration space, with the worlds (Everettian branches) popping into existence sequentially (rather than existing simultaneously, as in the Everett interpretation).
The second part of the talk elaborates how sBM steers an attractive middle path between wavefunction realists (such as advocates of the Everett interpretation) and primitive ontologists (such as advocates of BM or GRW).