On Tuesday, June 5, 2018 at 7:02:11 PM UTC, Brent wrote: > > > > On 6/5/2018 2:48 AM, [email protected] <javascript:> wrote: > > *One objective was to convince myself whether the wf you have written for > decoherence makes any sense. Originally I thought one needed mutual > interference of all components for it to be viable. I doubted whether each > component interferes with the others in your proposed wf because the |e> > wave functions have no well defined deBroglie wave lengths (which I thought > were necessary for a valid quantum superposition).* > > > de Broglie wave lengths are useful when thinking about a particle, but a > complex system with many degrees of freedom has many different energy > levels available to it and each one evolves with a different frequency. So > the de Broglie wavelength is not very useful. > > Brent >
*Agree. That's what Bruce wrote, in effect, when he noted that the macro states in the superposition for decoherence are just symbols for the multitude of entanglements, each presumably with its own deBroglie wave length**. But now I don't see the problem -- the weird implications --with these superpositions involving macro systems as dependent on interference. If the S Cat's wf can be written as a sum of two states, each entangled with the radioactive source, the implication is that the Cat is simultaneously alive and dead. It's like a simple vector in the plane -- those pointy things -- which can be written as the sum of a horizontal and vertical vectors (or a non orthogonal basis). If it can be written as a sum, it can be interpreted as manifesting both vectors in the sum simultaneously. So, if you want to write state vectors to include entanglements with macro systems, you will get cats that are alive and dead simultaneously, and in the decoherence case, you'll ger copies of this universe, inclusive of copies of observers, etc. That was Schrodinger's point; the fallacy of entangling quantum and macro states in one wf. AG* -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
