Putting Schrödinger's cat to rest

The measurement problem problem [sic] is to decide if there is a conflict between the random collapse of the wave function which is part of the description of measurement of a quantum system, and the deterministic evolution of the wave function described in Schrödinger's equation. After all, measurement devices, and cats, and even people, are presumably also physical systems, which looked at from the outside also satisfy the laws of quantum mechanics - i.e. evolve deterministically according to Schrödinger's equation.

I believe that there is a problem, metaphysical rather than physical, and that the problem has a mathematical solution. It is not my own solution, but has been discovered by V.P. Belavkin and called by him "eventum mechanics". It involves a beautiful combination of classical and quantum probability in the context of von Neumann algebras: the theory of which has been aptly characterized as "noncommutative measure theory".

I will give an introduction to the measurement problem and to Belavkin's solution. I will keep the mathematics elementary. Slides of an earlier version of this talk can be found at here.