Nature of Collapse
All versions of the Copenhagen interpretation include at least a formal or methodological version of wave function collapse, in which unobserved eigenvalues are removed from further consideration. (In other words, Copenhagenists have always made the assumption of collapse, even in the early days of quantum physics, in the way that adherents of the Many-worlds interpretation have not.) In more prosaic terms, those who hold to the Copenhagen understanding are willing to say that a wave function involves the various probabilities that a given event will proceed to certain different outcomes. But when one or another of those more- or less-likely outcomes becomes manifest the other probabilities cease to have any function in the real world. So if an electron passes through a double slit apparatus there are various probabilities for where on the detection screen that individual electron will hit. But once it has hit, there is no longer any probability whatsoever that it will hit somewhere else. Many-worlds interpretations say that an electron hits wherever there is a possibility that it might hit, and that each of these hits occurs in a separate universe.
An adherent of the subjective view, that the wave function represents nothing but knowledge, would take an equally subjective view of "collapse".
Some argue that the concept of the collapse of a "real" wave function was introduced by Heisenberg and later developed by John Von Neumann in 1932. Heisenberg never used the term collapse, preferring to speak of the wavefunction representing our knowledge of a system, and collapse as the "jumping" of the wavefunction to a new state, representing a "jump" in our knowledge which occurs once a particular phenomenon is registered by the experimenter (i.e. when an observation takes place).
Read more about this topic: Copenhagen Interpretation
Famous quotes containing the words nature of, nature and/or collapse:
“We all end up living secret lives. We create what we are willing to admire and admiring what we shouldn’t confess to the secret of our own sin, our own insufficiency, our own sadness. We all end up taking our secrets into the world and handing them over to strangers, only to realize it’s often too late to claim them back. The very nature of time passing is sad beyond words. Memories mean they’re gone.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)
“Put shortly, these are the two views, then. One, that man is intrinsically good, spoilt by circumstance; and the other that he is intrinsically limited, but disciplined by order and tradition to something fairly decent. To the one party man’s nature is like a well, to the other like a bucket. The view which regards him like a well, a reservoir full of possibilities, I call the romantic; the one which regards him as a very finite and fixed creature, I call the classical.”
—Thomas Ernest Hulme (1883–1917)
“The world was a huge ball then, the universe a might harmony of ellipses, everything moved mysteriously, incalculable distances through the ether.
We used to feel the awe of the distant stars upon us. All that led to was the eighty-eight naval guns, ersatz, and the night air-raids over cities. A magnificent spectacle.
After the collapse of the socialist dream, I came to America.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)