Everett Papers Archive and Commentary

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The quantum measurement problem encountered in the standard formulation of quantum mechanics results from the incompatibility of the deterministic dynamics characterized by Schrodinger's equation and the stochastic collapse dynamics that obtains only during measurement. Hugh Everett III famously proposed solving the measurement problem by simply dropping the collapse dynamics from the standard theory. He then believed that the empirical predictions of the standard theory might be recaptured as the subjective experiences of observers who are themselves treated within the theory. Everett called this the relative-state formulation of quantum mechanics, also, more popularly, known as the many-worlds interpretation. Everett's proposal has been deeply influential in how physicists have thought about quantum mechanics, but it has proven difficult to determine how best to understand Everett's proposal. This is due, in part, to the fact that Everett only published three short works on the subject: his Princeton Ph.D. thesis, a research paper that is essentially identical to the thesis, and an earlier and longer version of the thesis. New primary material, however, has been discovered. In addition to providing drafts of earlier work, this material indicates that Everett continued to think about the foundations and interpretation of quantum mechanics long after he published on the subject. The investigators will sort, catalog, archive, and put this material in a form that is easily accessible to physicists, historians, philosophers, and students of physics. The three main products of the research will be (1) a sorted collection of original source material, (2) a general online archive containing scans of all of the material relevant to Everett's interpretation of quantum mechanics, and (3) a bound edited collection of the material most salient to Everett's work on the foundations of quantum mechanics with extensive biographical and conceptual notes and commentary.