Lugano Philosophy Colloquia. Cristian Mariani

Cristian Mariani (USI) will give a talk on Friday, May 9 at 5.30pm (CET), Room 1.2 FTL Building (USI west campus), as part of the Lugano Philosophy Colloquia of Spring 2025.

Non-Markovian Collapse Models

Chaired by Lorenzo Lorenzetti (USI)

Abstract:

Spontaneous collapse models (SCM) employ an imaginary noise term in the modification of Schrödinger's equation in order to achieve a stochastic collapse process. Such noise term is typically assumed to be white, and therefore uncorrelated in time, which results in the dynamics being Markovian. In this talk I begin by discussing the reasons why physicists are exploring the possibility to instead employ non-white stochastic noise terms in the dynamics of SCM, and I then briefly introduce these models. In the second part, I am going to evaluate two broadly philosophical consequences of the non-Markovian models. First, I challenge some arguments, made by Builes & Impagnatiello (forthcoming) and by Adlam (2018), pointing to a connection between Markovianity (or lack thereof) and temporal ontology. Second, I discuss the ontological status of the noise field within the context of SCM.

For more info, click here.