The Many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics

By B. Dewitt, Neill Graham. 2015

790 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, first proposed in brief form by Hugh Everett in 1957, forms the nucleus around which this book has developed. In his interpretation, Dr. Everett denies the existence of a separate classical realm and asserts the propriety of considering a state vector for the whole universe. Because this state vector never collapses, reality as a whole is rigorously deterministic. This reality, which is described jointly by the dynamical variables and the state vector, is not the reality customarily perceived; rather, it is a reality composed of many worlds. By virtue of the temporal development of the dynamical variables, the state vector decomposes naturally into orthogonal vectors, reflecting a continual splitting of the universe into a multitude of mutually unobservable but equally real worlds, in each of which every good measurement has yielded a definite result, and in most of which the familiar statistical quantum laws hold. The volume contains Dr. Everett's short paper from 1957, "'Relative State' Formulation of Quantum Mechanics," and a far longer exposition of his interpretation, entitled "The Theory of the Universal Wave Function," never before published. In addition, other papers by Wheeler, DeWitt, Graham, and Cooper and Van Vechten provide further discussion of the same theme. Together, they constitute virtually the entire world output of scholarly commentary on the Everett interpretation. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Subfields: Atmospheric Science, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eab84f80192499b129b1908aa98dd63f9b73ab10

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Citations in the corpus

Models of Wave-function Collapse, Underlying Theories, and Experimental Tests (2012, background): “nite probability associated with an outcome? In our opinion, despite extensive investigation, this problem remains unsolved in the many-worlds interpretation (Barrett and Byrne, 2012; Deutsch, 1998; DeWitt and Graham, 1973; Hsu, 2011; Kent, 1990; Putnam, 2005; Saunders et al., 2010; Tegmark, 2007; V”
Past of a quantum particle (2013, methodology): “This led me to propose a modification of the MWI [26] in which weakly interacting particles at the intermediate time between two measurements (such as a photon in an interferometer) are described by the two-state vector which includes the information of the post-selection measurement and explains th”
Is the Quantum State Real? An Extended Review of -ontology Theorems (2014, background): “• Many-worlds: The many-worlds interpretation [6–8] is not contained within the ontological models framework because the latter assumes that measurements yield a single unique outcome.”