The Transactional Interpretation is a Collapse Theory

[Ruth Kastner]

It is not widely recognized that the Transactional Interpretation (TI) is a collapse theory; however, it is one that does not make ad hoc changes to the Schrodinger equation. Collapse is accounted for in TI by taking into account absorber response as a physical process (in the so-called ‘absorber theory’ of fields). Absorber response provides the nonlinearity precipitating the measurement transition without making any ad hoc changes to the basic theory; i.e., it leads to the von Neumann measurement transition, as shown in Kastner (2012), Chapter 3. TI is immune to many of the problems afflicting position-basis collapse theories (such as the ‘tails problem’), since it naturally takes the energy-momentum basis as preferred. This is because energy-momentum is a conserved quantity that is physically transferred from emitters to absorbers (i.e., from one bound state to another). Meanwhile, it is well known that position is not a real observable at the relativistic level (and time is not an observable at any level). The above are reasons for including TI as a viable ‘collapse’ interpretation that offers benefits at least equal to, and arguably surpassing, many of those currently under consideration. Comments welcome.

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