Is the modal-Hamiltonian interpretation of quantum mechanics invariant under the Galilean group?

JUAN SEBASTIÁN ARDENGHI; MARIO CASTAGNINO; OLIMPIA LOMBARDI

Amsterdam

Congreso; Second Conference of the European Philosophy of Science Association EPSA09; 2009

European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA)

In a recent paper (Lombardi & Castagnino 2008) we have presented a new member of the modal “family” of interpretations of quantum mechanics.  Our modal-Hamiltonian interpretation places an element with a clear physical meaning, the Hamiltonian of the system, at the heart of the proposal.  In particular, the Hamiltonian plays two central roles: (i) it supplies a precise criterion to distinguish between elemental and composite systems, and (ii) it univocally defines the preferred context.  In that paper, the study of the space-time symmetry transformations served a dual purpose: the identification of the fundamental physical magnitudes of the theory and the explanation of the role of the Hamiltonian in the selection of the constants of motion of the quantum system. Nevertheless, the behavior of the interpretative postulates under the Galilean transformation was not explored in that original work. The aim of this paper is to address the issue of the relationships between the modal-Hamiltonian interpretation and the Galilean transformations.  In particular, we will consider in what sense the interpretation satisfies the physical constraints of equivalence between reference frames imposed by the Galilean group.