Plaga's paper

Date: Wed, 25 Oct 1995 12:09:58 -0700
From: john baez <baez@math.ucr.edu>
To: quantum-d@teleport.com
Subject: QUANTUM-D: Plaga's paper

What do people think of Plaga's paper, "Proposal for an experimental test 
of the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics," available as
quant-ph/9510007?  (If you don't know how to get stuff from quant-ph,
check out the file preprint.info in the directory pub/baez, available
by anonymous ftp from math.ucr.edu.  Or just fire up your WWW browser
and go to http://xxx.lanl.gov/)

Here's the abstract:

The many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics
predicts the formation of distinct parallel worlds
as a result of a quantum mechanical measurement.
Communication among these parallel worlds
would experimentally rule out alternatives to
this interpretation.
A procedure for ``interworld'' exchange of information and energy,
using only state of the art quantum optical equipment, is described.
A single ion is isolated from its environment in an ion trap.
Then a quantum mechanical measurement
with two discrete outcomes is performed on another system,
resulting in the formation of two parallel worlds.
Depending on the outcome of this measurement the ion
is excited from only one of the parallel worlds before the
ion decoheres through its interaction
with the environment. A detection of this excitation
in  the other parallel world is direct
evidence for the many-worlds interpretation.
This method could have important
practical applications in physics and beyond.


Is this paper actually interesting?
John Baez