|
Nov 16
2009
|
  |
|
|
The many possibilities carried by quantum superpositions are spread out over space and time. However,  Newtonian physics is an accurate description of ordinary experience. What is the relationship between the strange quantum world and the classical world of common sense? Clearly the difference occurs when we measure or observe a quantum system. Whatever the process, it occurs at that time. The ``how and why'' of this process is unsolved and many believe modern physics will be incomplete until it is resolved.
By the 1950's, the ongoing parade of successes had made it abundantly clear that quantum theory was far more than a short-lived temporary fix. And so, in the mid 1950's, a Princeton graduate student named Hugh Everett III decided to revisit the collapse postulate in his Ph.D. thesis. Everett's idea is known as the relative-state, many-histories or many-universes interpretation or metatheory of quantum theory. Dr Hugh Everett, III, its originator, called it the "relative-state metatheory" or the "theory of the universal wavefunction", but it is generally called "many-worlds". Many-worlds is a re-formulation of quantum theory which treats the process of observation or measurement entirely within the wave-mechanics of quantum theory, rather than an input as additional assumption, as in the Copenhagen interpretation. Everett considered the wavefunction a real object. Many-worlds is a return to the classical, pre-quantum view of the universe in which all the mathematical entities of a physical theory are real. For example the electromagnetic fields of James Clark Maxwell or the atoms of Dalton were considered as real objects in classical physics. Everett treats the wavefunction in a similar fashion. Everett also assumed that the wavefunction obeyed the same wave equation during observation or measurement as at all other times. This is the central assumption of many-worlds: that the wave equation is obeyed universally and at all times. Quantum systems, like particles, that interact become entangled. If one of the systems is an observer and the interaction an observation then the effect of the observation is to split the observer into a number of copies, each copy observing just one of the possible results of a measurement and unaware of the other results and all its observer copies. Interactions between systems and their environments, including communication between different observers in the same world, transmits the correlations that induce local splitting or decoherence into non-interfering branches of the universal wavefunction. Thus the entire world is split, quite rapidly, into a host of mutually unobservable but equally real worlds. According to many-worlds all the possible outcomes of a quantum interaction are realised. The wavefunction, instead of collapsing at the moment of observation, carries on evolving in a deterministic fashion, embracing all possibilities embedded within it. All outcomes exist simultaneously but do not interfere further with each other, each single prior world having split into mutually unobservable but equally real worlds.
|
|
Worlds, or branches of the universal wavefunction, split when different components of a quantum superposition "decohere" from each other. Decoherence refers to the loss of coherency or absence of interference effects between the elements of the superposition. For two branches or worlds to interfere with each other all the atoms, subatomic particles, photons and other degrees of freedom in each world have to be in the same state, which usually means they all must be in the same place or significantly overlap in both worlds, simultaneously.
For small microscopic systems it is quite possible for all their atomic components to overlap at some future point. In the double slit experiment, for instance, it only requires that the divergent paths of the diffracted particle overlap again at some space-time point for an interference pattern to form, because only the single particle has been split. Such future coincidence of positions in all the components is virtually impossible in more complex, macroscopic systems because all the constituent particles have to overlap with their counterparts simultaneously. Any system complex enough to be described by thermodynamics and exhibit irreversible behaviour is a system complex enough to exclude, for all practical purposes, any possibility of future interference between its decoherent branches. An irreversible process is one in, or linked to, a system with a large number of internal, unconstrained degrees of freedom. Once the irreversible process has started then alterations of the values of the many degrees of freedom leaves an imprint which can't be removed. If we try to intervene to restore the original status quo the intervention causes more disruption elsewhere. |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
