Organizing Institutions:
Heinz von Foerster Gesellschaft / Wien
ASC – American Society for Cybernetics
WISDOM – Wiener Institut für
  sozialwissenschaftliche Dokumentation und Methodik
Institut für Zeitgeschichte | Universität Wien
AINS – Austrian Institute for Nonlinear Studies

Guido Bacciagaluppi

Non-equilibrium in Nelsonian Mechanics

University of Aberdeen

I discuss the notion of non-equilibrium in Nelsonian mechanics (i.e. the case in which the particle distribution is not equal to the quantum distribution): both how this notion makes sense in the first place, and how to describe non-equlibrium explicitly by using an effective Schroedinger-like equation. I apply the latter technique to a discussion of non-locality in the case of non-linear Schroedinger equations.

 

Guido Bacciagaluppi was born in Milan in 1965. After obtaining his degree in mathematics from ETH Zürich and his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Cambridge, he was Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and at Balliol College, Oxford. He was Junior Lecturer at Oxford University and Assistant Professor at the University of California at Berkeley, as well as Humboldt Fellow at the University and the IGPP of Freiburg (Germany). He then worked as a CNRS Researcher at IHPST, Paris, and as Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Time, University of Sydney. Since February 2009 he works at University of Aberdeen, where he is currently Reader in Philosophy. His research interests lie mainly in the philosophy of physics, in particular the foundations of quantum mechanics. He has contributed significantly to the development and critique of modal interpretations of quantum mechanics, and has since worked widely in various approaches to the foundations of quantum theory, as well as in the philosophy of probability and of time and in the history of quantum mechanics. He has recently published a book on the 1927 Solvay Conference together with A. Valentini (CUP, 2009). He is Associate Editor in philosophy of physics for the British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.