Volume 20: Pages 368-382, 2007
The Isoregulator Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
Harold M. Cooper 1
113809 Purche Ave, Gardena, California 90249 U.S.A.
The isoregulator interpretation is a realism‐based resynthesis of mostly familiar ideas proposed as the interpretive framework for the standard quantum formalism. The main unfamiliar idea, and key to that resynthesis, is an irreducibly indeterminate kinematics (as opposed to a determinate kinematics that merely simulates indeterminism through its interaction with a complex background) regarded as the subject matter of a classical mechanics that constrains but doesn't determine. If Newtonian mechanics is regarded as a determinate mechanics that completely specifies the trajectory, xd(t), then the isoregulator picture views quantum mechanics as its indeterminate dual, regulating only the fluctuation in an xu(t) trajectory. Since the same regulation scheme works on any phase space of physical parameters, quantized or continuous, the term “isoregulator” was coined to emphasize that universality — one not present in previous realistic reinterpretations that singled out position space. Although the isoregulator interpretation features a locally realistic ontology, it avoids the consequences of Bell's theorem. An isoregulatory version of wave‐function collapse (WFC), which is formally identical to the usual notion, is obtained as a self‐consistency condition for the coexistence of trajectories and the probabilistic interpretation of ψ*ψ. Unlike the usual version, it specifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for the triggering and timing of a WFC whose indeterminate outcomes are still weighted by the usual probabilities. In addition to providing a physical basis for the familiar “quantum jumps” of traditional quantum mechanics, a great deal more can be calculated, and tested, than just the final‐state probabilities. The isoregulator reinterpretation of quantum mechanics thus goes beyond being a mere philosophical rationalization because it generates a diverse catalog of experimental expectations without parallel in the standard Copenhagen interpretation. As a result, the isoregulator picture is the first reinterpretation that stands a real chance of being falsified. Since the relevant comparisons could be done on the most familiar of quantum systems, where the distinct signatures of each interpretation would be unambiguously expressed, the necessary experiments might be well within the range of current technology.
Keywords: indeterminate trajectory, regulation of kinematic chaos, bifurcation‐triggered kinematic collapse
Received: June 3, 2005; Published Online: May 26, 2009