Abstract
A historically important but little known debate regarding the necessity and meaning of macroscopic superpositions, in particular those containing different gravitational fields, is reviewed and discussed from a modern perspective.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bacciagaluppi, Guido and Elise Crull. 2009. Heisenberg (and Schrödinger, and Pauli) on hidden varaibles. Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Phys. 40: 374–382
Belinfante, Frederik Jozef. 1973. A Survey of Hidden Variables Theories. Pergamon Press, Oxford
DeWitt, Bryce S. 1967. Quantum theory of gravity. I. Canonical theory. Phys. Rev. 160: 1113
DeWitt, Cécile M. 1957. Conference on the Role of Gravitation in Physics, Wright Air Development Center report WADC TR 57-216 (Chapel Hill 1957) – Public Stinet Acc. Number AD0118180
DeWitt, Cécile M. and Dean Rickles. 2011. The role of gravitation in physics: report from the 1957 Chapel Hill Conference. Sources of Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge; Sources 5, Edition Open Access, Berlin
Dyson, Freeman. 1949. The radiation theories of Tomonaga, Schwinger, and Feynman. Phys. Rev. 75: 486–502
Everett, Hugh III. 1957. Relative state formulation of quantum mechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 29: 454–462
Feynman, Richard Phillips. 1948. Space-time approach to non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Rev. Mod. Phys. 20: 367–387
Feynman, Richard Phillips and Frank Lee Vernon. 1963. The theory of a general quantum system interacting with a linear dissipative system. Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 24: 118–173
Giulini, Domenico, Claus Kiefer and H. Dieter Zeh. 1995. Symmetries, superselection rules, and decoherence. Phys. Lett. A 199: 291–298
Hawking, Stephen W. 2005. Information loss in black holes. Phys. Rev. D 72: 084013
Joos, Erich. 1986. Why do we observe a classical spacetime. Phys. Lett. 116: 6–8
Joos, Erich, H. Dieter Zeh, Claus Kiefer, Domenico Giulini, Joachim Kupsch and I.O. Stamatescu. 2003. Decoherence and the Appearance of a Classical World in Quantum Theory, Springer, Berlin
Kiefer, Claus. 2007. Quantum Gravity, 2nd edn. Clarendon Press, Oxford
Penrose, Roger. 1986. Quantum Concepts in Space and Time, edited by Christopher J. Isham and Roger Penrose. Clarenden Press, Oxford
Poincaré, Henri. 1902. La science et l’hypothèse. Flammarion, Paris
Schlosshauer, Maximilian and Kristian Camilleri. 2008. The quantum-to-classical transition: Bohr’s doctrine of classical concepts, emergent classicality, and decoherence. Report [arXiv:0804.1609] (unpublished)
von Neumann, John. 1932. Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. Springer, Berlin, Chap. 6
Wheeler, John Archibald. 1968. Battelle rencontres, edited by Bryce S. DeWitt and John A. Wheeler. Benjamin, New York
Zeh, H. Dieter 2007. The Physical Basis of the Direction of Time, 5th edn. Springer, Berlin
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Dedicated to the late John A. Wheeler — mentor of Richard Feynman, Hugh Everett, and many other great physicists.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Zeh, H.D. Feynman’s interpretation of quantum theory. EPJ H 36, 63–74 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1140/epjh/e2011-10035-2
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjh/e2011-10035-2