A Quantum-Mechanical Explanation of the Collapse of the Wave Function

Abstract

The quantum field of a single particle is expressed as the sum of the particle's ordinary wave function and the vacuum fluctuations. An exact quantum-field calculation shows that the squared amplitude of this field sums, at any time, to a delta function representing a discrete corpuscle at one point and zero everywhere else. The peak of the delta function is located at the point where the vacuum fluctuations interfere constructively with the ordinary wave function. Similarly, the collapsed wave function after a measurement of an observable is determined by interference between the initial wave function and vacuum fluctuations.