Further on Pilot-Wave Theories

TL;DR

This paper discusses pilot-wave theories in quantum mechanics, challenging the perception that their complex formulations are necessary, and argues that simpler constructions may be possible without contradicting existing expectations.

Contribution

It proposes that the complicated pilot-wave models can be simplified, avoiding the need for highly contrived constructions, thus potentially advancing the understanding of pilot-wave theories.

Findings

The complex pilot-wave models are not necessarily required.

Simpler constructions of pilot-wave theories may be feasible.

The perceived necessity of complicated models may be reconsidered.

Abstract

In [2], a detailed argument is presented on a version of pilot-waves, given by at Theory of Exclusively Local Beables. What the author of [2] considers to be his crucial proposal is described in the title of section 3 as 'complicated, ugly, and highly contrived'. The reason for such a proposal is claimed to be the widespread perception among quantum physicists, according to which 'those sympathetic to the pilot-wave ontology no doubt expected that, for a system of N particles moving in three spatial dimensions, the theoretical description would be of N wave-particle pairs - each pair consisting of a point particle guided in some way by an associated wave propagating in 3-space. But Schroedinger's wave function for such an N-particle system was emphatically not a set of N (interacting) waves, each propagating in 3-space. It was, rather, a single wave propagating in the 3N-dimensional configuration space for the system', [2, p. 5]. In the present paper it is argued that the mentioned widespread expectation need not be seen as being betrayed by what actually happens. In particular, the construction in section 3 of [2] may be avoidable.