Relational Quantum Mechanics - History and Development

History and Development

Relational Quantum Mechanics arose from a historical comparison of the quandaries posed by the interpretation of quantum mechanics with the situation after the Lorentz transformations were formulated but before Special Relativity. Rovelli felt that just as there was an "incorrect assumption" underlying the pre-relativistic interpretation of Lorentz's equations, which was corrected by Einstein's derivation of them from Lorentz covariance and the constancy of the speed of light in all reference frames, so a similarly incorrect assumption underlies many attempts to make sense of the quantum formalism, which was responsible for many of the interpretational difficulties posed by the theory. This incorrect assumption, he said, was that of an observer-independent state of a system, and he laid out the foundations of this interpretation to try to overcome the difficulty. Since then, the idea has been expanded upon by Lee Smolin and Louis Crane, who have both applied the concept to quantum cosmology, and the interpretation has been applied to the EPR paradox, revealing not only a peaceful co-existence between quantum mechanics and Special Relativity, but a formal indication of a completely local character to reality.