Bohmschen

Bohmschen is the German attributive adjective derived from the surname Bohm, used to denote relation to the physicist David Bohm or his ideas. In scholarly German, terms built from Bohm’s name typically use the ending -sche, yielding phrases such as Bohmsche Mechanik, Bohmsche Interpretation, or Bohmische Quantenmechanik. The most widely cited concept associated with this formation is Bohmian mechanics, commonly referred to in English as the de Broglie–Bohm theory or pilot-wave theory.

Bohmian mechanics is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that introduces deterministic hidden variables. It posits that particles have definite positions at all times and are guided by the wave function through a guiding equation. While it yields the same statistical predictions as standard quantum mechanics under quantum equilibrium, it differs in its ontology by asserting real particle trajectories in addition to the wave function. The theory is explicitly nonlocal, allowing instantaneous dependencies between distant configurations via the guiding equation. It has been the subject of ongoing debate regarding realism, nonlocality, and the meaning of the wave function.

Historically, the framework was developed by David Bohm in 1952 as a reformulation of quantum theory intended to restore a causal description. In German literature, discussions of Bohm’s approach commonly use the phrase Bohmsche Mechanik to designate this line of thought. Beyond mechanistic terminology, related expressions such as Bohmsche Interpretation or Bohmische Quantenmechanik appear in various contexts to describe Bohm’s ideas within the broader landscape of quantum interpretations. The form Bohmschen appears as the adjectival connection to Bohm in different grammatical cases.