Is the idea of “collapsing the wave function” a requirement of QM itself? In that context, a “measurement” would be to be what you call “an interaction that must collapse the wave function”.
And your answer is simply wrong. An excited atom can emit a photon, for example, and the system will still be described by a “non-localized wave function”. It won’t even be well defined if the spontaneous emission has happened or not yet.
The evolution of a quantum system according to Schrödinger’s equation doesn’t violate conservation rules. And, in case it’s not clear, the quantum system described by the wave function in the example above is the atom-photon(-or-not) pair.
And your answer is simply wrong. An excited atom can emit a photon, for example, and the system will still be described by a “non-localized wave function”. It won’t even be well defined if the spontaneous emission has happened or not yet.
The evolution of a quantum system according to Schrödinger’s equation doesn’t violate conservation rules. And, in case it’s not clear, the quantum system described by the wave function in the example above is the atom-photon(-or-not) pair.
You’re definitely thinking about it wrong.