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Maximum Entropy Principle as Postulate of Quantum Mechanics

Quantum Physics 2024-02-19 v3 History and Philosophy of Physics

Abstract

Even a century after the formulation of Quantum Mechanics (QM), the wave function collapse (WFC) remains a contentious aspect of the theory. Environment-induced decoherence has offered a partial resolution by illustrating how unitary evolution in an open quantum system can lead to effective WFC within its components. However, this approach by itself does not lead to a fully self-consistent reformulation of QM. We introduce a modified set of QM postulates, which exclude both WFC and Born's probability rule. They are replaced with the Maximum Entropy Principle, a weaker postulate that specifies conditional probabilities for mutually compatible observations. Within this formulation, both WFC and Born's rule become emerging properties.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2311.04893,
  title  = {Maximum Entropy Principle as Postulate of Quantum Mechanics},
  author = {Alexei V. Tkachenko},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.04893},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

6 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-28T13:15:25.982Z