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Bohmian Insights into Quantum Chaos
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
Abstract
The ubiquity of chaos in classical mechanics (CM), as opposed to the situation in standard quantum mechanics (QM), might be taken as speaking against QM being the fundamental theory of physical phenomena. Bohmian mechanics (BM), as a formulation of quantum theory, may clarify both the existence of chaos in the quantum domain and the nature of the classical limit. Two interesting possibilities are (i) that CM and classical chaos are included in and underwritten by quantum mechanics (BM) or (ii) that BM and CM simply possess a common region of (noninclusive) overlap. In the latter case, neither CM nor QM alone would be sufficient, even in principle, to account for all of the physical phenomena we encounter. In this talk I shall summarize and discuss the implications of some recent work on chaos and on the classical limit within the framework of BM.
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- Philosophy of Physics and Chemistry
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- Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association
Footnotes
Several of the ideas discussed here are developed further in Cushing and Bowman 1999 and in Bowman 2000. I also want to thank Gary Bowman for extended discussions on the subject of this essay.
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