Hi all,
Next Tuesday, Tim Ehrensberger will talk about his semester thesis titled “A Relational Measurement Model”. See below for the abstract. The talk will take place at 17:15 in HIT E 41.1.
Best, Ladina
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Title:
A Relational Measurement Model
Abstract:
In quantum theory, there are exactly two possible descriptions of a process - collapse and unitary evolution. In the case where the process is a measurement, there is disagreement in the literature as to which of the two descriptions is correct. This disagreement is called the “measurement problem”.
The specification of a unitary evolution depends on fixed basis elements of the relevant Hilbert space. In quantum theory, however, these basis elements can only be determined up to a prefactor. In the present work, I argue that this indeterminacy in the basis leads to an additional source of disagreement in the measurement problem. The indeterminacy in the basis means that many different unitary evolutions are possible as descriptions. Interestingly, the average of these possible unitary evolutions gives the same description as collapse. This leads to the following idea:
The more of the possible unitary evolutions are considered for this average, the more we can speak of obtaining objective measurement results.
This idea is developed in the paper into a kind of meta-interpretation that can resolve the disagreement in the measurement problem in a gradual way.