Why does the wavefunction 'collapse' in relational approaches to quantum mechanics?

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 13 Apr 2026] Why does the wavefunction 'collapse' in relational approaches to quantum mechanics? Emily Adlam I argue that there is a straightforward way to understand the occurrence of wavefunction collapses or 'quantum events' in relational approaches to quantum mechanics: we necessarily encounter a discontinuity in our description when a system interacts with the reference relative to which we are describing it, since the reference system cannot be described relative to itself. This makes it clear how recent concerns around quantum events in relational quantum mechanics should be resolved. However, the solution requires accepting that quantum mechanics is not a complete description of all physical facts, and moreover I argue that this is most likely inevitable if we want to be able to give a precise description of quantum events. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.12094 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.12094v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.12094 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Emily Adlam [view email] [v1] Mon, 13 Apr 2026 22:09:34 UTC (26 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 Change to browse by: physics physics.hist-ph References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)