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Departmental Colloquium

Title
Collapse of the Collapse: Physicists Return to Reality  
Guest Speaker
Prof. Murray Daw  
Guest Affiliation
Department of Physics and Astronomy Clemson University  
When
Thursday, October 28, 2021 3:55 pm - 4:55 pm  
Location
Zoom Meeting  
Details

We note the recent demise of the collapse hypothesis, that an integral part of quantum mechanics is the "collapse" of the state of a system when measured. Using recent work of Anthony Rizzi, we show that the Ensemble Interpretation provides a simple and natural resolution to the problem of measurement in quantum mechanics. Along the way, we give a fuller explanation of the Ensemble Interpretation (in spite of the familiar-sounding name, this is almost entirely unknown), measurement theory in general (correcting many common misconceptions), the resolution of the Schrodinger Cat experiment, Wigner’s Friend experiment, and the Extended Wigner’s Friend experiment. At the end we encourage discussion of how to deal with the pedagogical situation, given that almost all current QM textbooks are based on the (now defunct) collapse hypothesis.

 

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