Event-Enhanced Formalism of Quantum Theory or Columbus Solution to the Quantum Measurement Problem

Abstract

Quantum Mechanics has proved to be tremendously powerful, practical, and successful in the description of the micro-world of elementary particles, atoms and molecules. There seems to be no limit to the versality of the Schrödinger equation and to the power of Quantum Theory as an incredibly accurate computational tool for the physicist, chemist, and biologist. The progress made in the last 70 years has really been a matter of sharpening the quantum mechanical mathematical formalism rather than of our understanding of it. As Quantum Mechanics amassed success after success only a few physicists remained fascinated by the fundamental problems that remained unsolved. The proposed solutions to the quantum measurement problem by e.g. von Neumann and Wigner — are no solution at all. They merely shift the focus from one unsolved problem to another. On the other hand the predictions for the outcomes of measurements performed on statistical ensembles of physical systems are excellent. What is however completely missing in the standard interpretation is an explanation of experimental facts i.e. a description of the actual individual time series of events of the experiment. That an enhancement of Quantum Theory allowing the description of single systems is necessary is nowadays clear. Indeed advances in technology make fundamental experiments on quantum systems possible. These experiments give us series of events for which there are definitely no place in the original, standard version of quantum mechanics, since each event is classical, discrete and irreversible. In recent papers [1–8] we provided a definite meaning to the concepts of experiment and event in the framework of mathematically consistent models describing the information transfer between classical event-space and quantum systems. We emphasize that for us the adjective ‘classical’ has to be understood in the following sense: to each particular experimental situation corresponds a class of classical events revealing us the Heisenberg transition from the possible to the actual and these events obey the rules of classical logic of Aristotle and Boole. The World of the Potential is governed by quantum logic and has to account for the World of Actual, whose logic is classical. We accept both and we try to see what we gain this way. It appears that working with so enhanced formalism of quantum theory we gain a lot. ¹ We proposed mathematical and physical rules to describe

• the two kinds of evolution of quantum systems namely continuous and stochastic

• the flow of information from quantum systems to the classical event-space

• the control of quantum states and processes by classical parameters.