Everett Papers Archive and Commentary

埃弗里特论文档案和评论

• 批准号: 0924135
• 负责人: Jeffrey Barrett
• 金额: $ 16.07万
• 依托单位: University of California-Irvine
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2009
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2009-08-01 至 2011-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0924135&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Everett; Papers; Archive; Commentary

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).The quantum measurement problem encountered in the standard formulation of quantum mechanics results from the incompatibility of the deterministic dynamics characterized by Schrodinger's equation and the stochastic collapse dynamics that obtains only during measurement. Hugh Everett III famously proposed solving the measurement problem by simply dropping the collapse dynamics from the standard theory. He then believed that the empirical predictions of the standard theory might be recaptured as the subjective experiences of observers who are themselves treated within the theory. Everett called this the relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics, also, more popularly, known as the many-worlds interpretation. Everett's proposal has been deeply influential in how physicists have thought about quantum mechanics, but it has proven difficult to determine how best to understand Everett's proposal. This is due, in part, to the fact that Everett only published three short works on the subject: his Princeton Ph.D. thesis, a research paper that is essentially identical to the thesis, and an earlier and longer version of the thesis. New primary material, however, has been discovered. In addition to providing drafts of earlier work, this material indicates that Everett continued to think about the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics long after he published on the subject. The investigators will sort, catalog, archive, and put this material in a form that is easily accessible to physicists, historians, philosophers, and students of physics. The three main products of the research will be (1) a sorted collection of original source material, (2) a general online archive containing scans of all of the material relevant to Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics, and (3) a bound edited collection of the material most salient to Everett's work on the foundations of quantum mechanics with extensive biographical and conceptual notes and commentary.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。量子力学标准表述中遇到的量子测量问题是由于以薛定谔方程为特征的确定性动力学与仅在测量过程中获得的随机坍缩动力学不相容。休·埃弗雷特三世（Hugh Everett III）提出了一个著名的解决测量问题的方法，即简单地从标准理论中去掉坍缩动力学。然后，他相信标准理论的经验预测可以作为观察者的主观经验被重新捕获，这些观察者自己也在理论中被对待。埃弗雷特将其称为量子力学的相对状态公式，也更通俗地称为多世界解释。埃弗雷特的提议对物理学家思考量子力学的方式产生了深远的影响，但事实证明，很难确定如何最好地理解埃弗雷特的提议。这在一定程度上是因为埃弗雷特只发表了三篇关于这个主题的短篇作品：他在普林斯顿大学的博士论文，一篇与论文基本相同的研究论文，以及一篇更早、更长的论文。然而，已经发现了新的原始材料。除了提供早期工作的草稿外，这些材料表明，埃弗雷特在发表量子力学论文很久之后，仍在继续思考量子力学的基础和解释。研究人员将对这些材料进行分类、编目、存档，并将这些材料以一种物理学家、历史学家、哲学家和物理学学生很容易获得的形式保存起来。该研究的三个主要产品将是：(1)原始原始材料的分类收集，(2)包含与埃弗雷特量子力学解释相关的所有材料扫描的一般在线档案，以及(3)对埃弗雷特量子力学基础工作最突出的材料的装订编辑收集，其中包括大量的传记和概念性笔记和评论。