2007/10/31 by Sheldon Goldstein, Roderich Tumulka, Nino Zanghı̀ +1
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Mathematics · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Biofield Effects and Biophysics #Classical mechanics #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Formalism (music) #Mathematics #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Statistical physics #Theoretical physics #Wave function #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s10955-012-0587-6
published as Journal of Statistical Physics 149: 142-201 (2012) · 74 pages LaTeX, no figures; v5 minor improvements
arxiv created 2012/08/28 · openalex publication_date 2012/09/18 · arxiv updated 2013/02/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) theory of spontaneous wave function collapse is known to provide a quantum theory without observers, in fact two different ones by using either the matter density ontology (GRWm) or the flash ontology (GRWf). Both theories are known to make predictions different from those of quantum mechanics, but the difference is so small that no decisive experiment can as yet be performed. While some testable deviations from quantum mechanics have long been known, we provide here something that has until now been missing: a formalism that succinctly summarizes the empirical predictions of GRWm and GRWf. We call it the GRW formalism. Its structure is similar to that of the quantum formalism but involves different operators. In other words, we establish the validity of a general algorithm for directly computing the testable predictions of GRWm and GRWf. We further show that some well-defined quantities cannot be measured in a GRWm or GRWf world.