Detlef Dürr – författare

This book discusses the physical and mathematical foundations of modern quantum mechanics and three realistic quantum theories that John Stuart Bell called "theories without observers" because they do not merely speak about measurements but develop an objective picture of the physical world. These are Bohmian mechanics, the GRW collapse theory, and the Many Worlds theory. 

The book is ideal to accompany or supplement a lecture course on quantum mechanics, but also suited for self-study, particularly for those who have completed such a course but are left puzzled by the question: "What does the mathematical formalism, which I have so laboriously learned and applied, actually tell us about nature?”

This book is a tribute to the scientific legacy of GianCarlo Ghirardi, who was one of the most influential scientists in the field of modern foundations of quantum theory. In this appraisal, contributions from friends, collaborators and colleagues reflect the influence of his world of thoughts on theory, experiments and philosophy, while also offering prospects for future research in the foundations of quantum physics. The themes of the contributions revolve around the physical reality of the wave function and its notorious collapse, randomness, relativity and experiments.

Bohmian Mechanics was formulated in 1952 by David Bohm as a complete theory of quantum phenomena based on a particle picture. It was promoted some decades later by John S. Bell, who, intrigued by the manifestly nonlocal structure of the theory, was led to his famous Bell''s inequalities. Experimental tests of the inequalities verified that nature is indeed nonlocal. Bohmian mechanics has since then prospered as the straightforward completion of quantum mechanics. This book provides a systematic introduction to Bohmian mechanics and to the mathematical abstractions of quantum mechanics, which range from the self-adjointness of the Schrödinger operator to scattering theory. It explains how the quantum formalism emerges when Boltzmann''s ideas about statistical mechanics are applied to Bohmian mechanics. The book is self-contained, mathematically rigorous and an ideal starting point for a fundamental approach to quantum mechanics. It will appeal to students and newcomers to the field, as well as to established scientists seeking a clear exposition of the theory.

It has often been claimed that without drastic conceptual innovations a genuine explanation of quantum interference effects and quantum randomness is impossible. This book concerns Bohmian mechanics, a simple particle theory that is a counterexample to such claims. The gentle introduction and other contributions collected here show how the phenomena of non-relativistic quantum mechanics, from Heisenberg''s uncertainty principle to non-commuting observables, emerge from the Bohmian motion of particles, the natural particle motion associated with Schrödinger''s equation. This book will be of value to all students and researchers in physics with an interest in the meaning of quantum theory as well as to philosophers of science.

Dieses Werk ermöglicht ein vertieftes Verständnis des Wahrscheinlichkeitsbegriffs. Es richtet sich an alle, die in ihrer wissenschaftlichen Arbeit, sei es während des Studiums oder in einem anderen Arbeitsumfeld, mit dem Begriff der Wahrscheinlichkeit hantieren müssen.

Wie kann Wahrscheinlichkeit oder der Zufall, Sinnbild des Unvorhersehbaren und Unfassbaren, sich der Mathematik, Sinnbild des Präzisen und Unbeirrbaren, unterordnen? Diese Frage begleitete die Wahrscheinlichkeitsrechnung von Beginn an und führte zu zahlreichen Versuchen, das Wesen der Wahrscheinlichkeit zu fassen.