12 ms·
> If we start out with the photon about to go through the half-silvered mirror, the state looks like |photon>⊗|me>, But in the MWI what we start with is the un
by kgwgk 7y ago
> If we start out with the photon about to go through the half-silvered mirror, the state looks like |photon>⊗|me>,
But in the MWI what we start with is the universal wavefunction |Psi>. Say there are 10^80 particles in the universe and they may have a spin and could be in infinite locations. That makes for an ininite-dimensional Hilbert space. If we consider that the precision in the location variables is limited by Planck's length there are still around 10^180 possible locations in the universe for each particle. The Hilbert space where the quantum state of the universe is defined is huge.
Now, you say "the state looks like |photon>⊗|me>". To keep things simple and in the realm of Schroedinger's equation I will consider an electron instead of a photon, prepared in the state spin z=+1/2.
Is "|up>⊗|me>" shorthand for "(1 |up> + 0 |down>)⊗|me, the electron at that position, the rest of the universe>" which would be the "in-branch" quantum state of the universe?
If indeed |Psi> can be written as a superposition of that state and an inconceivable huge number of orthogonal states, are all those states (when their coefficient is non-zero) the multiple worlds?
But given |Psi> there are infinitely many (or at least a lot of) possible basis to express the pure state as a decomposition (including of course the one where the only non-zero "world" in the superposition is the one described by the wave function |Psi>). Do we count as "worlds" as well the states appearing in other basis?
Is this slicing of |Psi> into other states just a mathematical trick or does it have a physical meaning? Even if we can redo the operation at different times on the evolving |Psi(t)>, how are the "emergent substates" at different times related?
The answer to all these questions is far from trivial.
- vilhelm_s 7y agoIndeed not, but is any of this relevant to the original quote, that deterministic dynamics means that the initial state of the universe must have lots of information hidden in the far-off decimals? I would hope that one could consider a simplified setting for that and then extrapolate back to the continuous case.
- kgwgk 7y agoI agree the original quote doesn’t present a very strong argument against the MWI. In the same way that arguments against determinism in classical physics are not very convincing. But seemed worth pointing out. In the MWI case it’s not clear how sensitive the “worlds” are to the in initial state. It’s not even clear how sensitive they are to the current state! Better understanding of how (and how many) worlds “emerge” would be needed to say if the “problem” is or not as bad as in the classical case. Is the number of worlds stable? Is it increasing? In any case, those worlds are the inevitable consequence of the initial conditions even though we can’t even estimate how much fine-tuning is needed. I don’t think “randomness generated along the way” is a satisfactory counter-argument.