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Many-worlds interpretation
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The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
It is also known as MWI, the relative state formulation, theory of the universal wavefunction, parallel universes, many-universes interpretation or just many worlds.
Many-worlds denies the objective reality of wavefunction collapse, instead explaining the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse with the mechanism of quantum decoherence. Many-worlds claims to resolve all of the correlation paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox, since every possible outcome to every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world." In layman's terms, this means that there is a very large, perhaps infinite, number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen, or could possibly have happened, in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in some other universe(s).
Proponents argue that MWI reconciles how we can perceive non-deterministic events (such as the random decay of a radioactive atom) with the deterministic equations of quantum physics.
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Encyclopedia
The many-worlds interpretation is an interpretation of quantum mechanics.
It is also known as MWI, the relative state formulation, theory of the universal wavefunction, parallel universes, many-universes interpretation or just many worlds.
Many-worlds denies the objective reality of wavefunction collapse, instead explaining the subjective appearance of wavefunction collapse with the mechanism of quantum decoherence. Many-worlds claims to resolve all of the correlation paradoxes of quantum theory, such as the EPR paradox, since every possible outcome to every event defines or exists in its own "history" or "world." In layman's terms, this means that there is a very large, perhaps infinite, number of universes and that everything that could possibly happen, or could possibly have happened, in our universe (but doesn't) does happen in some other universe(s).
Proponents argue that MWI reconciles how we can perceive non-deterministic events (such as the random decay of a radioactive atom) with the deterministic equations of quantum physics. Prior to many worlds this had been viewed as a single "world-line". Many-worlds rather views it as a many-branched tree where every possible quantum event is realised.
The relative state formulation is due to Hugh Everett who formulated it in 1957. Later, this formulation was popularized and renamed many worlds by Bryce Seligman DeWitt in the 1960s and '70s. The decoherence approach to interpreting quantum theory has been further explored and developed becoming quite popular, taken as a class overall. MWI is one of many Multiverse hypotheses in physics and philosophy. It is currently considered a mainstream interpretation along with the other decoherence interpretations and the Copenhagen interpretation.
The many worlds interpretation has, controversially, been seen by some as offering the possibility of deriving the Born rule and the appearance of quantum probabilities from simpler assumptions. In fact, this was first attempted by Everett and DeWitt in the 1950s. In a September 2007 conference David Wallace reported on what is claimed to be a proof by Deutsch and himself of the Born Rule starting from Everettian assumptions. The status of these arguments remains highly controversial, but it is fair to say that some theoretical physicists have taken them as supporting the case for parallel universes.
Outline
Although several versions of MWI have been proposed since Hugh Everett's original work, they all contain one key idea: the equations of physics that model the time evolution of systems without embedded observers are sufficient for modelling systems which do contain observers; in particular there is no observation-triggered wavefunction collapse which the Copenhagen interpretation proposes. Provided the theory is linear with respect to the wavefunction, the exact form of the quantum dynamics modelled, be it the non-relativistic Schrödinger equation, relativistic quantum field theory or some form of quantum gravity or string theory, does not alter the validity of MWI since MWI is a metatheory applicable to all linear quantum theories, and there is no experimental evidence for any non-linearity of the wavefunction in physics. MWI's main conclusion is that the universe (or multiverse in this context) is composed of a quantum superposition of very many, possibly infinitely many, increasingly divergent, non-communicating parallel universes or quantum worlds.
The idea of MWI originated in Everett's Princeton Ph.D. thesis "The Theory of the Universal Wavefunction", developed under his thesis advisor John Archibald Wheeler, a shorter summary of which was published in 1957 entitled "Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics" (Wheeler contributed the title "relative state"; Everett originally called his approach the "Correlation Interpretation", although in Everett's usage the term correlation is what is now called quantum entanglement). The phrase "many worlds" is due to Bryce DeWitt, who was responsible for the wider popularisation of Everett's theory, which had been largely ignored for the first decade after publication. DeWitt's phrase "many-worlds" has become so much more popular than Everett's "Universal Wavefunction" or Everett-Wheeler's "Relative State Formulation" that many forget that this is only a difference of terminology; the content of all three papers is the same.
The many-worlds interpretation shares many similarities with later, other "post-Everett" interpretations of quantum mechanics which also use decoherence to explain the process of measurement or wavefunction collapse. MWI treats the other histories or worlds as real since it regards the universal wavefunction as the "basic physical entity" or "the fundamental entity, obeying at all times a deterministic wave equation". The other decoherent interpretations, such as many histories, consistent histories, the Existential Interpretation etc, either regard the extra quantum worlds as metaphorical in some sense, or are agnostic about their reality; it is sometimes hard to distinguish between the different varieties. MWI is distinguished by two qualities: it assumes realism, which it assigns to the wavefunction, and it has the minimal formal structure possible, rejecting any hidden variables, quantum potential, any form of a collapse postulate (i.e. Copenhagenism) or mental postulates (such as the many-minds interpretation makes).
Many worlds is often referred to as a theory, rather than just an interpretation, by those who propose that many worlds can make testable predictions (such as David Deutsch) or is falsifiable (such as Everett) or that all the other, non-MWI, are inconsistent, illogical or unscientific in their handling of measurements; Hugh Everett argued that his formulation was a metatheory, since it made statements about other interpretations of quantum theory; that it was the "only completely coherent approach to explaining both the contents of quantum mechanics and the appearance of the world".
Wavefunction collapse and the problem of interpretation
As with the other interpretations of quantum mechanics, the many-worlds interpretation is motivated by behavior that can be illustrated by the double-slit experiment. When particles of light (or anything else) are passed through the double slit, a calculation assuming wave-like behavior of light is needed to identify where the particles are likely to be observed. Yet when the particles are observed in this experiment, they appear as particles (i.e. at definite places) and not as non-localized waves.
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics proposed a process of "collapse" in which an indeterminate quantum system would probabilistically collapse down onto, or select, just one determinate outcome to "explain" this phenomenon of observation. Wavefunction collapse was widely regarded as artificial and ad-hoc, so an alternative interpretation in which the behavior of measurement could be understood from more fundamental physical principles was considered desirable.
Everett's Ph.D. work provided such an alternative interpretation. Everett noted that for a composite system (for example that formed by a particle interacting with a measuring apparatus, or more generally by a subject (the "observer") observing an object (the "observed" system) the statement that a subsystem (i.e. the observer or the observed) has a well-defined state is meaningless -- in modern parlance the subsystem states have become entangled -- we can only specify the state of one subsystem relative to the state of the other subsystem, i.e. the state of the observer and the observed are correlated. This led Everett to derive from the unitary, deterministic dynamics alone (i.e. without assuming wavefunction collapse) the notion of a relativity of states of one subsystem relative to another.
Everett noticed that the unitary, deterministic dynamics alone decreed that after an observation is made each element of the quantum superposition of the combined subject-object wavefunction contains two relative states: a "collapsed" object state and an associated observer who has observed the same collapsed outcome; what the observer sees and the state of the object are correlated. The subsequent evolution of each pair of relative subject-object states proceeds with complete indifference as to the presence or absence of the other elements, as if wavefunction collapse has occurred, which has the consequence that later observations are always consistent with the earlier observations. Thus the appearance of the object's wavefunction's collapse has emerged from the unitary, deterministic theory itself. (This answered Einstein's early criticism of quantum theory, that the theory should define what is observed, not for the observables to define the theory
.)
Since Everett stopped doing research in theoretical physics shortly after obtaining his Ph.D., much of the elaboration of his ideas was carried out by other researchers and forms the basis of much of the decoherent approach to quantum measurement.
Advantages
- MWI (or other, broader multiverse considerations) provides a context for the anthropic principle which may provide an explanation for the fine-tuned universe.
- MWI, being a decoherent formulation, is axiomatically more streamlined than the Copenhagen and other collapse interpretations; and thus favoured under certain interpretations of Ockham's razor. Of course there are other decoherent interpretations that also possess this advantage with respect to the collapse interpretations.
Objections
- The many worlds interpretation is very vague about the ways to determine when splitting happens, and nowadays usually the criterion is that the two branches have decohered. However, present day understanding of decoherence does not allow a completely precise, self contained way to say when the two branches have decohered/"do not interact", and hence many worlds interpretation remains arbitrary. This is the main objection opponents of this interpretation raise, saying that it is not clear what is precisely meant by branching, and point to lack of self contained criterion specifying branching to be described.
MWI response: the decoherence or "splitting" or "branching" is complete when the measurement is complete. In Dirac notation a measurement is complete when:
-
where O[i] represents the observer having detected the object system in the i-th state. Before the measurement has started the observer states are identical; after the measurement is complete the observer states are orthonormal. Thus a measurement defines the branching process: the branching is as well- or ill- defined as the measurement is. Thus branching is complete when the measurement is complete. Since the role of the observer and measurement per se plays no special role in MWI (measurements are handled as all other interactions are) there is no need for a precise definition of what an observer or a measurement is -- just as in Newtonian physics no precise definition of either an observer or a measurement was required or expected. In all circumstances the universal wavefunction is still available to give a complete description of reality.
Objections response: the MWI response states no special role nor need for precise definition of measurement in MWI, yet uses the word "measurement" in part of its main argument.
MWI response: "measurements" are treated a subclass of interactions, which induce subject-object correlations in the combined wavefunction. There is nothing special about measurements (they don't trigger any wave function collapse, for example); they are just another unitary time development process.
Also, it is a common misconception to think that branches are completely separate. In Everett's formulation, they may in principle quantum interfere with each other in the future, although this requires all "memory" of the earlier branching event to be lost, so no observer ever sees another branch of reality.
Fundamentally, any arguments based on the definition of "branching" or "decoherence" are simply based on a misunderstanding of MWI.
- There is circularity in Everett's measurement theory. Under the assumptions made by Everett, there are no 'good observations' as defined by him, and since his analysis of the observational process depends on the latter, it is void of any meaning. The concept of a 'good observation' is the projection postulate in disguise and Everett's analysis simply derives this postulate by having assumed it, without any discussion. Talk of probability in Everett presumes the existence of a preferred basis to identify measurement outcomes for the probabilities to range over. But the existence of a preferred basis can only be established by the process of decoherence, which is itself probabilistic.
MWI response: Everett's treatment of observations / measurements covers both idealised good measurements and the more general bad or approximate cases. Thus it is legitimate to analyse probability in terms of measurement; no circularity is present.
- We cannot be sure that the universe is a quantum multiverse until we have a theory of everything and, in particular, a successful theory of quantum gravity. If the final theory of everything is non-linear with respect to wavefunctions then many-worlds would be invalid.
MWI response: all accepted quantum theories of fundamental physics are linear with respect to the wavefunction. Whilst quantum gravity or string theory may be non-linear in this respect there is no evidence to indicate this at the moment.
- Conservation of energy: Conservation of energy is grossly violated if every instant infinite amounts of new matter are generated.
MWI response: Conservation of energy is not violated since the energy of each branch has to be weighted by its probability, according to the standard formula for the conservation of energy in quantum theory. This results in the total energy of the multiverse being conserved.
MWI response: Occam's razor actually is a constraint on the complexity of physical theory, not on the number of universes. MWI is a simpler theory since it has fewer postulates. See the "advantages" section.
- Unphysical universes: If a state is a superposition of two states Psi(A) and Psi(B), i.e. Psi = (a.Psi(A) + b.Psi(B)), i.e. weighted by coefficients a and b, then if b << a, what principle allows a universe with vanishingly small probability b to be instantiated on an equal footing with the much more probable one with probability a? This seems to throw away the information in the probability amplitudes. Such a theory makes little sense.
MWI response: The magnitude of the coefficients provides the weighting that makes the branches or universes "unequal", as Everett and others have shown, leading the emergence of the conventional probabilistic rules.
- Violation of Relativity: MWI splitting is instant and total: this may conflict with relativity, as an alien in the Andromeda galaxy can't know I collapse an electron over here before she collapses hers there: the relativity of simultaneity says we can't say which electron collapsed first - so which one spilts off another universe first? This leads to a hopeless muddle with everyone splitting differently. Note: EPR is not a get-out here, as the alien's and my electrons need never have been part of the same quantum, i.e. entangled.
MWI response: the splitting can be regarded and causal and relativistic, spreading at, or below, the speed of light (e.g. we are not split by Schrödinger's cat until we look in the box).
Brief overview
In Everett's formulation, a measuring apparatus M and an object system S form a composite system, each of which prior to measurement exists in well-defined (but time-dependent) states. Measurement is regarded as causing M and S to interact. After S interacts with M, it is no longer possible to describe either system by an independent state. According to Everett, the only meaningful descriptions of each system are relative states: for example the relative state of S given the state of M or the relative state of M given the state of S. In DeWitt's formulation, the state of S after a sequence of measurements is given by a quantum superposition of states, each one corresponding to an alternative measurement history of S.
For example, consider the smallest possible truly quantum system S, as shown in the illustration. This describes for instance, the spin-state of an electron. Considering a specific axis (say the z-axis) the north pole represents spin "up" and the south pole, spin "down". The superposition states of the system are described by (the surface of) a sphere called the Bloch sphere. To perform a measurement on S, it is made to interact with another similar system M. After the interaction, the combined system is described by a state that ranges over a six-dimensional space (the reason for the number six is explained in the article on the Bloch sphere). This six-dimensional object can also be regarded as a quantum superposition of two "alternative histories" of the original system S, one in which "up" was observed and the other in which "down" was observed. Each subsequent binary measurement (that is interaction with a system M) causes a similar split in the history tree. Thus after three measurements, the system can be regarded as a quantum superposition of 8= 2 × 2 × 2 copies of the original system S.
The accepted terminology is somewhat misleading because it is incorrect to regard the universe as splitting at certain times; at any given instant there is one state in one universe.
Relative state
The goal of the relative-state formalism, as originally proposed by Everett in his 1957 doctoral dissertation, was to interpret the effect of external observation entirely within the mathematical framework developed by Paul Dirac, von Neumann and others, discarding altogether the ad-hoc mechanism of wave function collapse. Since Everett's original work, there have appeared a number of similar formalisms in the literature. One such idea is discussed in the next section.
The relative-state interpretation makes two assumptions. The first is that the wavefunction is not simply a description of the object's state, but that it actually is entirely equivalent to the object, a claim it has in common with some other interpretations. The second is that observation or measurement has no special role, unlike in the Copenhagen interpretation which considers the wavefunction collapse as a special kind of event which occurs as a result of observation.
The many-worlds interpretation is DeWitt's popularisation of Everett's work, who had referred to the combined observer-object system as being split by an observation, each split corresponding to the different or multiple possible outcomes of an observation. These splits generate a possible tree as shown in the graphic below. Subsequently DeWitt introduced the term "world" to describe a complete measurement history of an observer, which corresponds roughly to a single branch of that tree. Note that "splitting" in this sense, is hardly new or even quantum mechanical. The idea of a space of complete alternative histories had already been used in the theory of probability since the mid 1930s for instance to model Brownian motion.
Under the many-worlds interpretation, the Schrödinger equation, or relativistic analog, holds all the time everywhere. An observation or measurement of an object by an observer is modeled by applying the wave equation to the entire system comprising the observer and the object. One consequence is that every observation can be thought of as causing the combined observer-object's wavefunction to change into a quantum superposition of two or more non-interacting branches, or split into many "worlds". Since many observation-like events have happened, and are constantly happening, there are an enormous and growing number of simultaneously existing states.
If a system is composed of two or more subsystems, the system's state will be a superposition of products of the subsystems' states. Once the subsystems interact, their states are no longer independent. Each product of subsystem states in the overall superposition evolves over time independently of other products. The subsystems states have become correlated or entangled and it is no longer possible to consider them independent of one another. In Everett's terminology each subsystem state was now correlated with its relative state, since each subsystem must now be considered relative to the other subsystems with which it has interacted.
Comparative properties and experimental support
One of the salient properties of the many-worlds interpretation is that observation does not require an exceptional construct (such as wave function collapse) to explain it. Many physicists, however, dislike the implication that there are infinitely many non-observable alternate universes.
, there are no practical experiments that distinguish between Many-Worlds and Copenhagen. There may be cosmological, observational evidence.
Copenhagen interpretation
In the Copenhagen interpretation, the mathematics of quantum mechanics allows one to predict probabilities for the occurrence of various events. In the many-worlds interpretation, all these events occur simultaneously. What meaning should be given to these probability calculations? And why do we observe, in our history, that the events with a higher computed probability seem to have occurred more often? One answer to these questions is to say that there is a probability measure on the space of all possible universes, where a possible universe is a complete path in the tree of branching universes. This is indeed what the calculations give. Then we should expect to find ourselves in a universe with a relatively high probability rather than a relatively low probability: even though all outcomes of an experiment occur, they do not occur in an equal way. As an interpretation which (like other interpretations) is consistent with the equations, it is hard to find testable predictions of MWI.
Quantum suicide
There is a rather more dramatic test than the one outlined above for people prepared to put their lives on the line: use a machine which kills them if a random quantum decay happens. If MWI is true, they will still be alive in the world where the decay didn't happen and would feel no interruption in their stream of consciousness. By repeating this process a number of times, their continued consciousness would be arbitrarily unlikely unless MWI was true, when they would be alive in all the worlds where the random decay was on their side. From their viewpoint they would be immune to this death process. Clearly, if MWI does not hold, they would be dead in the one world. Other people would generally just see them die and would not be able to benefit from the result of this experiment. See Quantum suicide.
Universe and false vacuum
Some Cosmologists argue that the universe is in a false vacuum state. There is also the claim that the universe should have already experienced quantum tunnelling to a true vacuum state. This has not happened. That may increase the probability that many-worlds is true.
Many-minds
The many-worlds interpretation should not be confused with the many-minds interpretation which postulates that it is only the observers' minds that split instead of the whole world.
Axiomatics
The existence of many worlds in superposition is not accomplished by introducing some new axiom to quantum mechanics, but on the contrary by removing the axiom of the probabilistic collapse of the wave packet: All the possible consistent states of the measured system and the measuring apparatus (including the observer) are present in a physically real quantum superposition, not just formally mathematical superposition, as in other interpretations. (Such a superposition of consistent state combinations of different systems is called an entangled state.)
Hartle showed that in Everett's relative-state theory, Born's probability law
- The probability of an observable to have the value in a normalized state is the absolute square of the eigenvalue component of the state corresponding to the eigenvalue a:
no longer has to be considered an axiom or postulate. It can rather be derived from the other axioms of quantum mechanics. All that has to be assumed is that if the state is an eigenstate of the observable , then the result of the measurement is certain. This means that a second axiom of quantum mechanics can be removed.
Hartle's derivation only works in a theory (like Everett's) that does not cut away ("collapse") any superposition components of the wave function. In other interpretations it is not comprehensible why the absolute square is used and not some other arbitrary, more complicated expression of the eigenvalue component say, the square root or some polynomial of its norm.
As a consequence Everett's interpretation or metatheory is an alternative formulation of quantum theory requiring fewer axioms than previously required and thus favoured by interpretations of the "Occam's razor" heuristic that emphasize simplicity of the mathematical or logical structure of a theory (as opposed to interpretations that emphasize a minimal number of hypothesized entities or some other aspect).
One might argue that postulating the existence of many worlds is some kind of axiomatic assumption, but each world is merely an element in the quantum superposition of the universal wavefunction; quantum superpositions are a common and indispensable part of all interpretations of quantum theory, as is most clearly illustrated in the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics. Even the simple reflection of a photon from a mirror becomes amazingly convoluted when looked at from this perspective, as the photon follows all paths instead of just following the incident and reflected rays, and destructively interferes with itself on all paths save the classical. Everett's theory just considers it a real phenomenon in nature and applies it to macroscopic systems in the same way as it is conventionally applied to microscopic systems.
Example
MWI describes measurements as a formation of an entangled state which is a perfectly linear process (in terms of quantum superpositions) without any collapse of the wave function. For illustration, consider a Stern-Gerlach experiment and an electron or a silver atom passing this apparatus with a spin polarization in the x direction and thus a superposition of a spin up and a spin down state in z-direction. As a measuring apparatus, take a tracking chamber or another nonabsorbing particle detector; let the electron pass the apparatus and reach the same site in the end on either way so that except for the z-spin polarization the state of the electron is finally the same regardless of the path taken (see The Feynman Lectures on Physics for a detailed discussion of such a setup). Before the measurement, the state of the electron and the measuring apparatus is:
The state is factorizable into a tensor factor for the electron and another factor for the measurement apparatus. After the measurement, the state is:
The state is no longer factorizable -- regardless of the vector basis chosen. As an illustration, understand that the following state is factorizable:
since it can be written as
(which might be not so obvious if another vector basis is chosen for the states).
The state of the above experiment is decomposed into a sum of two so-called entangled states ("worlds") both of which will have their individual history without any interaction between the two due to the physical linearity of quantum mechanics (the superposition principle): All processes in nature are linear and correspond to linear operators acting on each superposition component individually without any notice of the other components being present.
This would also be true for two non-entangled superposed states, but the latter can be detected by interference which is not possible for different entangled states (without reversing the entanglement first): Different entangled states cannot interfere; interactions with other systems will only result in a further entanglement of them as well. In the example above, the state of a Schrödinger cat watching the scene will be factorizable in the beginning (before watching)
but not in the end:
This example also shows that it's not the whole world that is split up into "many worlds", but only the part of the world that is entangled with the considered quantum event. This splitting tends to extend by interactions and can be visualised by a zipper or a DNA molecule which are in a similar way not completely opened instantaneously but gradually, element by element.
Imaginative readers will even see the zipper structure and the extending splitting in the formula:
If a system state is entangled with many other degrees of freedom (such as those in amplifiers, photographs, heat, sound, computer memory circuits, neurons, paper documents) in an experiment, this amounts to a thermodynamically irreversible process which is constituted of many small individually reversible processes at the atomic or subatomic level as is generally the case for thermodynamic irreversibility in classical or quantum statistical mechanics. Thus there is -- for thermodynamic reasons -- no way for an observer to completely reverse the entanglement and thus observe the other worlds by doing interference experiments on them. On the other hand, for small systems with few degrees of freedom this is feasible, as long as the investigated aspect of the system remains unentangled with the rest of the world.
The MWI thus solves the measurement problem of quantum mechanics by reducing measurements to cascades of entanglements.
The formation of an entangled state is a linear operation in terms of quantum superpositions. Consider for example the vector basis
and the non-entangled initial state
The linear (and unitary and thus reversible) operation (in terms of quantum superpositions) corresponding to the matrix
(in the above vector basis) will result in the entangled state
Partial trace and relative state
The state transformation of a quantum system resulting from measurement, such as the double slit experiment discussed above, can be easily described mathematically in a way that is consistent with most mathematical formalisms. We will present one such description, also called reduced state, based on the partial trace concept, which by a process of iteration, leads to a kind of branching many worlds formalism. It is then a short step from this many worlds formalism to a many worlds interpretation.
For definiteness, let us assume that system is actually a particle such as an electron. The discussion of reduced state and many worlds is no different in this case than if we considered any other physical system, including an "observer system". In what follows, we need to consider not only pure states for the system, but more generally mixed states; these are described by certain linear operators on the Hilbert space H. Indeed, as the various measurement scenarios point out, the set of pure states is not closed under measurement. Mathematically, density matrices are statistical mixtures of pure states. Operationally a mixed state can be identified to a statistical ensemble resulting from a specific lab preparation process.
Decohered states as relative states
Suppose we have an ensemble of particles, prepared in such a way that its state S is pure. This means that there is a unit vector in H (unique up to phase) such that S is the projection operator given in
bra-ket notation by
Now consider an experimental setup to determine whether the particle has a particular property: For example the property could be that the location of the particle is in some region A of space. The experimental setup can be regarded either as a measurement of an observable or as a filter. As a measurement, it measures the observable Q which takes the value 1 if the particle is found in A and 0 otherwise. As a filter, it filters in those particles in the ensemble which have the stated property of being in A and filtering out the others.
Mathematically, a property is given by a self-adjoint projection E on the Hilbert space H: Applying the filter to an ensemble of particles, some of the particles of the ensemble are filtered in, and others are filtered out. Now it can be shown that the operation of the filter "collapses" the pure state in the following sense: it prepares a new mixed state given by the density operator
where F = 1 - E.
To see this, note that as a result of the measurement, the state of the particle immediately after the measurement is in an eigenvector of Q, that is one of the two pure states
with respective probabilities
The mathematical way of presenting this mixed state is by taking the following convex combination of pure states:
which is the operator S1 above.
Remark. The use of the word collapse in this context is somewhat different that its use in explanations of the Copenhagen interpretation. In this discussion we are not referring to collapse or transformation of a wave into something else, but rather the transformation of a pure state into a mixed one.
The considerations so far, are completely standard in most formalisms of quantum mechanics. Now consider a "branched" system whose underlying Hilbert space is
where H2 is a two-dimensional Hilbert space with basis vectors and . The branched space can be regarded as a composite system consisting of the original system (which is now a subsystem) together with a non-interacting ancillary single qubit system. In the branched system, consider the entangled state
We can express this state in density matrix format as . This multiplies out to:
The partial trace of this mixed state is obtained by summing the operator coefficients of and in the above expression. This results in a mixed state on H. In fact, this mixed state is identical to the "post filtering" mixed state S1 above.
To summarize, we have mathematically described the effect of the filter for a particle in a pure state ? in the following way:
- The original state is augmented with the ancillary qubit system.
- The pure state of the original system is replaced with a pure entangled state of the augmented system and
- The post-filter state of the system is the partial trace of the entangled state of the augmented system.
Multiple branching
In the course of a system's lifetime we expect many such filtering events to occur. At each such event, a branching occurs. In order for this to be consistent with the branching structure as depicted in the illustration above, we must show that if a filtering event occurs in one path from the root node of the tree, then we may assume it occurs in all branches. This shows that the tree is highly symmetric, that is for each node n of the tree, the shape of the tree does not change by interchanging the subtrees immediately below that node n.
In order to show this branching uniformity property, note that the same calculation carries through even if original state S is mixed. Indeed, the post filtered state will be the density operator:
The state S1 is the partial trace of
This means that to each subsequent measurement (or branching) along one of the paths from the root of the tree to a leaf node corresponds to a homologous branching along every path. This guarantees the symmetry of the many-worlds tree relative to flipping child nodes of each node.
General quantum operations
In the previous two sections, we have represented measurement operations on quantum systems in terms of relative states. In fact there is a wider class of operations which should be considered: these are called quantum operations. Considered as operations on density operators on the system Hilbert space H, these have the following form:
where I is a finite or countably infinite index set. The operators Fi are called Kraus operators.
Theorem. Let
Then
Moreover, the mapping V defined by
is such that
If ? is a trace-preserving quantum operation, then V is an isometric linear map
where the Hilbert direct sum is taken over copies of H indexed by elements of I. We can consider such maps F as imbeddings. In particular:
Corollary. Any trace-preserving quantum operation is the composition of an isometric imbedding and a partial trace.
This suggests that the many worlds formalism can account for this very general class of transformations in exactly the same way that it does for simple measurements.
Branching
In general we can show the uniform branching property of the tree as follows: If
and
where
and
then a calculation shows
This also shows that in between the measurements given by proper (that is, non-unitary) quantum operations, one can interpolate arbitrary unitary evolution.
Quantum probabilities explained by continuous branching
Dr. David Deutsch along with Oxford colleagues have demonstrated mathematically that the bush-like branching structure created by the universe splitting into parallel versions of itself can explain the probabilistic nature of quantum outcomes. In the New Scientist article on the discovery, Andy Albrecht, a physicist at the University of California at Davis, is quoted as saying "This work will go down as one of the most important developments in the history of science." Deutsch and his Oxford colleagues are thus seen to apparently bolster March - May '07 internet postings of Dr. David Anacker (to physics cognoscenti including Lisa Randall, Lee Smolin, David Deutsch, G. T'Hooft, S. Glashow, S. Weinberg, M. Kaku, L. Susskind, et.al.) via earlier establishing agreement between predictive statistics of the Everett and Copenhagen interpretations.
Acceptance among physicists
There is a wide range of claims that are considered "many worlds" interpretations. It is often claimed by those who do not believe in MWI that Everett himself was not entirely clear as to what he believed; however MWI adherents believe they fully understand Everett's meaning as implying the literal existence of the other worlds. Additionally some MWI adherents point to Everett's reported belief in quantum immortality, which they also take to require belief in the reality of all the many worlds represented by the components of the uncollapsed universal wavefunction.
"Many worlds"-like interpretations are now considered fairly mainstream within the quantum physics community. For example, a poll of 72 leading physicists conducted by the American researcher David Raub in 1995 and published in the French periodical Sciences et Avenir in January 1998 recorded that nearly 60% thought many worlds interpretation was "true". Max Tegmark also reports the result of a poll taken at a 1997 quantum mechanics workshop. According to Tegmark, "The many worlds interpretation (MWI) scored second, comfortably ahead of the consistent histories and Bohm interpretations." Other such polls have been taken at other conferences: see for instance Michael Nielsen's blog report on one such poll. Nielsen remarks that it appeared most of the conference attendees "thought the poll was a waste of time". MWI sceptics (for instance Asher Peres) argue that polls regarding the acceptance of a particular interpretation within the scientific community, such as those mentioned above, cannot be used as evidence supporting a specific interpretation's validity. However, others note that science is a group activity (for instance, peer review) and that polls are a systematic way of revealing the thinking of the scientific community.
A 2005 minor poll on the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics workshop at the Institute for Quantum Computing University of Waterloo produced contrary results, with the MWI as the least favored.
One of MWI's strongest advocates is David Deutsch. According to Deutsch, the single photon interference pattern observed in the double slit experiment can be explained by interference of photons in multiple universes. Viewed in this way, the single photon interference experiment is indistinguishable from the multiple photon interference experiment. In a more practical vein, in one of the earliest papers on quantum computing, he suggested that parallelism that results from the validity of MWI could lead to "a method by which certain probabilistic tasks can be performed faster by a universal quantum computer than by any classical restriction of it". Deutsch has also proposed that when reversible computers become conscious that MWI will be testable (at least against "naive" Copenhagenism) via the reversible observation of spin.
Asher Peres was an outspoken critic of MWI, for example in a section in his 1993 textbook with the title Everett's interpretation and other bizarre theories. In fact, Peres questioned whether MWI is really an "interpretation" or even if interpretations of quantum mechanics are needed at all. Indeed, the many-worlds interpretation can be regarded as a purely formal transformation, which adds nothing to the instrumentalist (i.e. statistical) rules of the quantum mechanics. Perhaps more significantly, Peres seems to suggest that positing the existence of an infinite number of non-communicating parallel universes is highly suspect as it violates those interpretations of Occam's Razor that seek to minimize the number of hypothesized entities. Proponents of MWI argue precisely the opposite, by applying Occam's Razor to the set of assumptions rather than multiplicity of universes. In Max Tegmark's formulation, the alternative to many worlds is the undesirable "many words", an allusion to the complexity of von Neumann's collapse postulate).
MWI is considered by some to be unfalsifiable and hence unscientific because the multiple parallel universes are non-communicating, in the sense that no information can be passed between them. Others claim MWI is directly testable. Everett regarded MWI as falsifiable since any test that falsifies conventional quantum theory would also falsify MWI.
According to Martin Gardner MWI has two different interpretations: real or unreal, and claims that Stephen Hawking and Steve Weinberg favour the unreal interpretation. Gardner also claims that the interpretation favoured by the majority of physicists is that the other worlds are not real in the same way as our world is real, whereas the "realist" view is supported by MWI experts David Deutsch and Bryce DeWitt. However Stephen Hawking is on record as a saying that the other worlds are as real as ours and Tipler reports Hawking saying that MWI is "trivially true" (scientific jargon for "obviously true") if quantum theory applies to all reality. Roger Penrose agrees with Hawking that QM applied to the universe implies MW, although he considers the current lack of a successful theory of quantum gravity negates the claimed universality of conventional QM.
Speculative implications
Speculative physics deals with questions also discussed in science fiction.
Choice and travel
Under the Many-Worlds interpretation, every choice a person makes results in the creation of two or more 'new' universes: one for each 'option' in a given choice. Question: is it possible that all of the universes necessary to accommodate every possible choice (most likely an infinite amount of universes) were already created at the same instant as our own? Does the existence of any single universe necessitate the existence of an infinite number of others? Price gives evidence for both sides to the speculation. On the one hand he says that quantum effects rarely or never affect human decisions. On the other hand he says that all possible decisions are realized in some worlds.
It is further speculated that it might be possible to move 'between' these universes, of which there would be an infinite number or a very large finite number. Price believes that travel between worlds is impossible.
Quantum suicide
It has been claimed that there is an experiment that would clearly differentiate between the many-worlds interpretation and other interpretations of quantum mechanics. It involves a quantum suicide machine and an experimenter willing to risk death. However, at best, this would only decide the issue for the experimenter; bystanders would learn nothing. The flip side of quantum suicide is quantum immortality.
Another speculation is that the separate worlds remain weakly coupled (e.g. by gravity) permitting "communication between parallel universes". This requires that gravity be a classical force and not quantized.
The many-worlds interpretation has some similarity to modal realism in philosophy, which is the view that the possible worlds used to interpret modal claims actually exist. Unlike philosophy, however, in quantum mechanics counterfactual alternatives can influence the results of experiments, as in the Elitzur-Vaidman bomb-testing problem or the Quantum Zeno effect.
Time travel
The many-worlds interpretation could be one possible way to resolve the paradoxes that one would expect to arise if time travel turns out to be permitted by physics (permitting closed timelike curves and thus violating causality). Entering the past would itself be a quantum event causing branching, and therefore the timeline accessed by the time traveller simply would be another timeline of many. In that sense, it would make the Novikov self-consistency principle unnecessary.
Many worlds in literature and science fiction
The many-worlds interpretation (and the somewhat related concept of possible worlds) have been associated to numerous themes in literature, art and science fiction.
Some of these stories or films violate fundamental principles of causality and relativity, and are extremely misleading since the information-theoretic structure of the path space of multiple universes (that is information flow between different paths) is very likely extraordinarily complex. Also see Michael Clive Price's FAQ referenced in the external links section below where these issues (and other similar ones) are dealt with more decisively.
Another kind of popular illustration of many worlds splittings, which does not involve information flow between paths, or information flow backwards in time considers alternate outcomes of historical events. According to many worlds, most of the historical speculations entertained within the alternate history genre are realised in parallel universes.
See also
Further reading
- Jeffrey A. Barrett, The Quantum Mechanics of Minds and Worlds, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999.
- Julian Brown, Minds, Machines, and the Multiverse, Simon & Schuster, 2000, ISBN 0-684-81481-1
- Asher Peres, Quantum Theory: Concepts and Methods, Kluwer, Dordrecht, 1993.
- Mark A. Rubin, Locality in the Everett Interpretation of Heisenberg-Picture Quantum Mechanics, Foundations of Physics Letters, 14, (2001) , pp. 301-322,
- David Wallace, Harvey R. Brown, Solving the measurement problem: de Broglie-Bohm loses out to Everett, Foundations of Physics,
- David Wallace, Worlds in the Everett Interpretation, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 33, (2002), pp. 637-661,
- Paul C.W. Davies, Other Worlds, (1980) ISBN 0-460-04400-1
- John A. Wheeler and Wojciech Hubert Zurek (eds), Quantum Theory and Measurement, Princeton University Press, (1983), ISBN 0-691-08316-9
- James P. Hogan, The Proteus Operation, Science Fiction involving the Many-Worlds Interpretation, time travel and World War 2 history., baen; Reissue edition (August 1, 1996) ISBN-10: 0671877577
- Frank J. Tipler, Testing Many-Worlds Quantum Theory By Measuring Pattern Convergence Rates,
External links
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