On Formalisms and Interpretations
Quantum Physics
2018-10-17 v6
Abstract
One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism versus interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there are actually two inequivalent quantum formalisms, namely the relative-state formalism and the standard formalism with the Born and measurement-update rules. We further propose a different probability rule for the relative-state formalism and discuss how Wigner's-friend-type experiments could show the inequivalence with the standard formalism. The feasibility in principle of such experiments, however, remains an open question.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1710.07212,
title = {On Formalisms and Interpretations},
author = {Veronika Baumann and Stefan Wolf},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1710.07212},
year = {2018}
}