Survey of Quantum Mechanics Interpretations: From Foundations to Contemporary Frameworks
A 15-page review article submitted to arXiv surveys the conceptual and interpretational landscape of quantum mechanics, from foundational postulates to contemporary debates. The paper was an invited submission to the 33rd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School held in Stellenbosch in 2025. It provides a structured overview of how major interpretations—including Copenhagen, de Broglie-Bohm, many-worlds, and consistent histories—address the nature of physical reality.
Authored by Theodore McKeever and posted to arXiv's quantum physics section, the article offers an introductory but comprehensive tour of quantum mechanics' most contested conceptual terrain. It begins with the mathematical structure of Hilbert space and the postulates governing state evolution and measurement, then examines the epistemic stance of the Copenhagen interpretation and its modern reformulations. The paper proceeds to analyze the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, Bell's theorem, and Hardy's paradox as tools for probing locality and realism, and contrasts these with the deterministic but explicitly nonlocal de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave theory. The measurement problem, quantum contextuality, and objective collapse models—which posit new physical dynamics to explain definite measurement outcomes—are also covered. The article concludes with a discussion of decoherence and its role in the emergence of classical behavior, framed within the many-worlds and consistent-histories interpretational programs. The work was invited for the proceedings of the 33rd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Stellenbosch, 2025, and has undergone at least one revision since its initial March 2026 submission.
What's missing
As an invited pedagogical review rather than original research, the article does not claim novel results; however, readers should note it does not appear to have undergone formal peer review beyond the invitation process, as it is a preprint. The specific criteria used to select which interpretations and results to include—and which are omitted, such as relational quantum mechanics or QBism—are not discussed in the abstract.
What different sources said
- arXiv physicsCenter
An Introduction to the Foundations and Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics
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