QM interpretation like Many Worlds but with 'real' particles?

[rgmcc]

Hello Forum,

I've been reading about MWI, the Bohm interpretation, and Feynman QED.
Combining elements from these interpretations, I've been building up my own simple mental model of 'how to picture the state of affairs', and I've been speculating about the feasibility of interpretations which employ some or all of the following aspects:

-One would consider the configuration space where any possible (positional) arrangement of particles in the Universe is a valid 'world' (or we could say 'observable moment')

-Configurations that are identical in every way except for phase are 'summed together' to give one resultant 'world', using the vector addition of phase; this would produce interference phenomenon by "cancelling out" the existence of particles at certain positions
(or a different approach might be necessary in considering which worlds to sum together)

-To determine phase, consider all state-transition-paths (for each particle) leading to a given world from any other world, using something like a Feynman path integral

-Time only exists as an emergent thing; rather we only have 'changes of configuration' which can step backwards and forwards in so-called 'time'

-The Wave Function would perhaps not need to be considered 'real', but would just emerge from the ensemble behaviour of particles and the rules for summing path integrals



I think such an interpretation would yield appealing features such as Determinism, Configuration-Space Locality, and perhaps a straightforward approach to the Measurement Problem. On the other hand, I may be making all kinds of mistakes! :)

Question1: can anyone point me to any links/articles/discussion of interpretations similar to what I am describing?

Question2: are there any obvious flaws or 'gotchas' you see already in this type of interpretation?


Thanks!

 

[rgmcc]

Well, I admit I'm new to the forum and something tells me I asked too much at once.

Let me try to start more simply:


As mentioned in
http://en.wikipedia.or/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics#endnote_note3 , particles are considered 'real' entities in de Broglie-Bohm theory.

Does anyone know of interpretive theories similar to Many-Worlds but with particles as 'real entities' rather than the universal wavefunction?

 

[Fyzix]

Yes, it's actually the only MWI that works with a real ontology and Born Rule, it got some other problems though.
It's briefly discussed here:
http://onqm.blogspot.com/2009/10/mwi-proposals-that-include.html

 

[rgmcc]

Thanks Fyzix, that link looks really helpful.

And it's good to see the lingo people are using around these ideas, so I can express myself better, e.g."The most obvious way to do that might be to assume that the wavefunction is represented by an integer function on configuration space rather than a continuous function. (If configuration space is also discrete, that is one way an approximate discrete numerical representation of a continuous wave function might be done on a digital computer.)"

This is a concept I've been trying to phrase properly.