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Bohmian Insights into Quantum Chaos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

James T. Cushing
James T. Cushing*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Nieuwland Science Hall, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5670.
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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.

Type
Philosophy of Physics and Chemistry
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers Sep., 2000 , 2000 , pp. S430 - S445
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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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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