2016/11/21 by Roland Omnès, Omnès, Roland
Computer Science · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1611.06731
openalex publication_date 2016/11/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Is wave function collapse a prediction of the Schrödinger equation? This unusual problem is explored in an enlarged framework of interpretation, where quantum dynamics is considered exact and its interpretation is extended to include local entanglement of two systems, including a macroscopic one. This property of local entanglement, which results directly from the Schrödinger equation but is unrelated with observables, is measured by local probabilities, fundamentally distinct from quantum probabilities and evolving nonlinearly. When applied to a macroscopic system and the fluctuations in its environment, local entanglement can also inject a formerly ignored species of incoherence into the quantum state of this system,. When applied to a quantum measurement, the conjunction of these two effects suggests a self-consistent mechanism of collapse, which would directly derive from the Schrödinger equation. (This work develops and improves significantly a previously circulated version with the same title [23])