The High Energy Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

journal homepage www.euresisjournal.org We address the issue of interpretation of quantum mechanics by asking why the issue never arises in the description of high-energy interactions. We argue that several tenets of quantum mechanics, specifically the collapse of the wave function, follow directly once accepts the essential randomness of fundamental interaction events. We then show that scale separation of fundamental interactions ensures that the measurement can be unambiguously separated from the quantum events. Finally, we argue that the fundamental symmetries of space and time guarantee the existence of a unique preferred basis. We argue that this set of ideas might lead to an interpretation of quantum mechanics, or rather, show in which sense an “interpretation ” is necessary. 1. The Quantum World and its “Paradoxes” It is a commonplace statement that the laws of quantum mechanics are strange and to some extent paradoxical: a statement which is reflected not only in the titles of popular science books (see e.g. [1, 2]) but also in chapter headings of textbooks (e.g. “Abandoning realism ” in Chapter 3.7 of [3]) or even papers (see [4] on quantum mechanics. Of course, in popular science, relativity, say, (even special relativity) is also often described as puzzling and paradoxical. However, as any physicist (in fact, any decent physics undergraduate) knows, special relativity expresses the kinematic properties of physical laws in a way which is neither more complicated nor less intuitive than Galilean relativity. Indeed, both special relativity and Galilean relativity are easily understood by reflecting on simple thought experiments. The only reason why Einsteinian relativity is somewhat less intuitive than its Galilean counterpart is that the thought experiments on which it is based can be easily referred to everyday experience — such as the original discussion by Galileo of moving ships [5] — while the thought experiments of relativity require objects that 1 a