A Relativistic Version of the Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber Model

By Roderich Tumulka. 2004

334 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Carrying out a research program outlined by John S. Bell in 1987, we arrive at a relativistic version of the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) model of spontaneous wavefunction collapse. The GRW model was proposed as a solution of the measurement problem of quantum mechanics and involves a stochastic and nonlinear modification of the Schrödinger equation. It deviates very little from the Schrödinger equation for microscopic systems but efficiently suppresses, for macroscopic systems, superpositions of macroscopically different states. As suggested by Bell, we take the primitive ontology, or local beables, of our model to be a discrete set of space-time points, at which the collapses are centered. This set is random with distribution determined by the initial wavefunction. Our model is nonlocal and violates Bell’s inequality though it does not make use of a preferred slicing of space-time or any other sort of synchronization of spacelike separated points. Like the GRW model, it reproduces the quantum probabilities in all cases presently testable, though it entails deviations from the quantum formalism that are in principle testable. Our model works in Minkowski space-time as well as in (well-behaved) curved background space-times.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/01b47f301c5eaa12becd812db6ac86958c1884e7

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Artificial Intelligence

In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

John S. Bell’s concept of local causality (2007, background): “[15] Roderich Tumulka, “A Relativistic Version of the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber Model” J.”
Models of Wave-function Collapse, Underlying Theories, and Experimental Tests (2012, methodology): “The Tumulka-GRW model (Tumulka, 2006a) and the CSL model belong to this group.”
Bohmian Mechanics (2009, background): “And non-locality need not conflict with relativity, as illustrated particularly by the relativistic Ghirardi–Rimini–Weber (GRW) theory [63, 50].”