Roland Omnès
| Roland Omnès | |
|---|---|
| Born | Roland Omnès 18 February 1931 |
| Residence | France |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields |
Theoretical physics Quantum Mechanics |
| Institutions | Université Paris-Sud XI |
Roland Omnès (born 18 February 1931) is the author of several books which aim to close the gap between our common sense experience of the classical world and the complex, formal mathematics which is now required to accurately describe reality at its most fundamental level.
Omnès is currently Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics in the Faculté des sciences at Orsay, at the Université Paris-Sud XI. He has been instrumental in developing the consistent histories and quantum decoherence approaches in quantum mechanics.
In his philosophical work (especially in Quantum Philosophy), Omnès argues that:
We will never, Omnès believes, find a common sense interpretation of quantum law itself. Nevertheless, it is now possible to see that common sense and quantum reality are compatible with each other: we can enter the world at either starting point, and we will find that each leads to the other: experiment leads to theory, and the theory can now recover the common sense framework in which the experiment was conducted (and in which our lives are lived).
Omnès' work is sometimes described as an updating of the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is somewhat misleading. The relationship between the two accounts is as follows.
The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics (argued for most centrally by Niels Bohr) tells us to "shut up and calculate". It says that there are certain questions we simply cannot ask, and that there are inexplicable rules which we have to apply in order to get from a quantum description of reality (which we know is experimentally correct to at least 10 decimal places of accuracy) to the reality of our day-to-day, common sense lives (which seems self-evidently correct, and yet is apparently in contradiction with quantum law).
Omnès tells us that we no longer have to shut up in order to calculate: there is now a self-consistent framework which enables us to recover the principles of classical common sense - and to know, precisely, their limits - starting from fundamental quantum law.
The work Omnès presents in his books was developed by Omnès himself, Robert B. Griffiths, Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle, and others.
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