Orthodox Quantum Mechanics
Orthodox quantum mechanics has two seemingly contradictory mathematical descriptions:
1. deterministic unitary time evolution (governed by the Schrödinger equation) and
2. stochastic (random) wavefunction collapse.
Most physicists are not concerned with this apparent problem. Physical intuition usually provides the answer, and only in unphysical systems (e.g., Schrödinger's cat, an isolated atom) do paradoxes seem to occur.
Orthodox quantum mechanics can be reformulated in a quantum-probabilistic framework, where quantum filtering (see Bouten et al. for introduction or Belavkin, 1970s ) gives the natural description of the measurement process. This new framework encapsulates the standard postulates of quantum mechanics, and thus all of the science involved in the orthodox postulates.
Read more about this topic: Quantum Probability
Famous quotes containing the words orthodox, quantum and/or mechanics:
“All orthodox opinion—that is, today, “revolutionary” opinion either of the pure or the impure variety—is anti-man.”
—Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)
“The receipt to make a speaker, and an applauded one too, is short and easy.—Take of common sense quantum sufficit, add a little application to the rules and orders of the House, throw obvious thoughts in a new light, and make up the whole with a large quantity of purity, correctness, and elegancy of style.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“the moderate Aristotelian city
Of darning and the Eight-Fifteen, where Euclid’s geometry
And Newton’s mechanics would account for our experience,
And the kitchen table exists because I scrub it.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)