the retarded plus one half the advanced fields, was the fundamental solution and that the arrow of time is generated by an absorber mechanism associated with all the other charges in the universe. In our construction of a wave function reduction mechanism, we shall use some of the ideas of this theory but expressed in a different way. We shall focus on the interrelation of the retarded and advanced fields and the absorber mechanism as correlated with the experimental apparatus and the wave function reduction. We shall find that in our interpretation, the wave function reduction is constrained by cosmological models. Indeed, in conjunction with the radiation absorber theory of wave function reduction, the electrodynamical arrow of time is a consequence of certain cosmological models and is incompatible with others. The connection between absorber radiation theories and cosmology was first pointed out by Hogarth[@Hogarth], and was developed further by Hoyle and Narlikar[@Hoyle; @Hoyle2], and Davies[@Davies1; @Davies2].

Consider a solution of Maxwell’s equations with particle $i$ as the only source, and which has only retarded outgoing waves admitted. We denote this solution by $F^{(i)}_{\mu\nu\,\rm ret}$, while the corresponding advanced solution, which admits only incoming waves, is designated $F^{(i)}_{\mu\nu\,\rm adv}$. From Maxwell’s 