Collapse of the Wave Function?
Most recent answer: 12/22/2015
- Simon (age 44)
British Columbia, Canada
Great question. FIrst, let's clarify the implications of the Bell Inequalities. They actually make no mention whatsoever of any form of quantum mechanics. They purely concern the necessary consequences of non-conspiratorial local realism. Nature consistently violates those necessary consequences. Therefore any form of non-conspiratorial local realism must be false.
Now we're ready to turn to quantum mechanics. The sort of modifications of the Schrödinger equation (or, more properly, of relativistic quantum field theory) that you are wondering about have been considered for a long time. The go by the name of "macro-realism." Some of the best known ideas are due to Ghirardi, Rimini, and Webwer and to Phillip Pearle. Since the first versions of these were local realist ideas, they cannot succeed. Pearle in particular has been working on ideas that are non-local, but I think he would agree that they have not yet succeeded either. I once published another toy idea for modifying QFT in a non-linear way, but it too has problems.
So it remains conceivable that some modification of QFT will solve the measurement problem. The sorts of ideas that you're thinking about, however, are local in our ordinary spacetime, and they cannot work.
Mike W.
(published on 12/22/2015)