TI: Derivation of the Born Rule for Radiative Processes

[Ruth Kastner]

The Transactional Interpretation involves advanced field states and is therefore considered a form of a ‘retrocausal’ interpretation, although in the relativistic development of TI (RTI), the advanced states (as well as the triggering retarded states) are complex objects and are sub-empirical (i.e., not spacetime processes). It is only the real-valued field resulting from an actualized transaction that corresponds to a spacetime process (e.g., a real photon transferred from an emitting atom to an absorbing atom), and the latter establishes an ‘arrow of time’ in that positive energy propagates into the future.
Of particular interest is a recent derivation of the Born Rule for radiative processes, in which it is readily seen that including absorption as an active process along with emission leads naturally to the Born Rule. This result, available when one considers the existence of radiation as contingent on both emission and absorption, as in the absorber theory of fields, can be found in my recent paper with John Cramer (pp. 7-9): https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.04501.pdf

[editor]

Thanks, Ruth! This is an interesting topic.

[Quantum Speculations]

I will read the paper later.

[Author]

Posts