BOHMIAN MECHANICS AND QUANTUM EQUILIBRIUM
BOHMIAN MECHANICS AND QUANTUM EQUILIBRIUMDetlef Durr*, Sheldon Goldstein and Nino Zangh¨ ´i**Department of MathematicsRutgers UniversityNew Brunswick, NJ 089031. IntroductionWe report here on our work on Bohmian mechanics. A much more detailedpresentation will be published elsewhere [7].According to the quantum formalism, measurements performed on a quantumsystem with deﬁnite wave function typically yield random results. However, thequantum dynamics governing the evolution of the wave function over time, at leastwhen no measurement is being performed, and given, say, by Schrodinger’s equa-tion, is completely deterministic. Thus if all physical processes, including those wecall measurements, are governed by the same fundamental laws, and if one assumesthe wave function to be the complete description of the physical state, one arrivesat an inconsistency, often referred to as “the measurement problem” or the problemof the “collapse of the wave function.”Debates over this were strongly inﬂuenced by “quantum epistemology”—by theobligatory reference to the observer in a measurement, whose act of “observation”somehow creates the random outcome. In recent years, however, the growing disen-chantment with this irreducible reference to the observer has begun to assume theform of serious doubts about the validity and meaning of the quantum formalism.