Princeton Physics The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: A Fundamental Exposition by Hugh Everett III with Papers by J. A. Book 61 (Hardcover)

A landmark book on the influential many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics In 1957 Hugh Everett proposed a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics--a view that eventually became known as the many-worlds interpretation. This book presents Everett s two landmark papers on the idea-- Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics and The Theory of the Universal Wave Function --as well as further discussion of the idea in papers from a number of other physicists: J. A. Wheeler Bryce DeWitt L. N. Cooper and D. Van Vechten and Neill Graham. In his interpretation Everett denies the existence of a separate classical realm and asserts the propriety of considering a state vector for the whole universe. Because this state vector never collapses reality as a whole is rigorously deterministic. This reality which is described jointly by the dynamical variables and the state vector isn t the reality customarily perceived; rather it s a reality composed of many worlds. By virtue of the temporal development of the dynamical variables the state vector decomposes naturally into orthogonal vectors reflecting a continual splitting of the universe into a multitude of mutually unobservable but equally real worlds in each of which every good measurement has yielded a definite result and in most of which the familiar statistical quantum laws hold. Bryce S. DeWitt (1923-2004) was a prize-winning theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Texas at Austin. Neill Graham (1941-2015) was a physicist and writer.