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Bohmian Mechanics

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Compendium of Quantum Physics

Bohmian mechanics is a theory about point particles moving along trajectories. It has the property that in a world governed by Bohmian mechanics, observers see the same statistics for experimental results as predicted by quantum mechanics. Bohmian mechanics thus provides an explanation of quantum mechanics. Moreover, the Bohmian trajectories are defined in a non-conspiratorial way by a few simple laws.

Overview. Bohmian mechanics is a version of quantum mechanics for nonrelativistic particles in which the word “particle” is to be understood literally: In Bohmian mechanics quantum particles have positions, always, and follow trajectories. These trajectories differ, however, from the classical Newtonian trajectories. Indeed, the law of motion, see (1) below, involves a ► wave function. As a consequence, the role of the wave function in Bohmian mechanics is to tell the matter how to move.

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Dürr, D., Goldstein, S., Tumulka, R., Zanghí, N. (2009). Bohmian Mechanics. In: Greenberger, D., Hentschel, K., Weinert, F. (eds) Compendium of Quantum Physics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-70626-7_16

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