Related papers: The Production of Time
Many attempts have been made to characterise and solve the infamous measurement problem of quantum mechanics by advocating, implicitly or explicitly, different realist perspectives. As a result, we are still uncertain where this problem and…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
Due to the absence of an external, classical time variable, the probabilistic predictions of covariant quantum theory are ambiguous when multiple measurements are considered. Here, we introduce an information theoretic framework to the…
I take a pragmatist perspective on quantum theory. This is not a view of the world described by quantum theory. In this view quantum theory itself does not describe the physical world, nor our observatons, experiences or opinions of it.…
Inspired by the work of Wheeler among others, we have studied the problem of quantum measurements of space-time distances by applying the general principles of quantum mechanics as well as those of general relativity. Contrary to the…
The notion of time in cosmology is revealed through an examination of transition matrix elements of radiative processes occurring in the cosmos. To begin with, the very concept of time is delineated in classical physics in terms of…
An attempt is made to give a heuristic explanation of the distinguished role of measurement in the quantum theory. We question the notion of "naive" reductionism by stressing the difference between an isolated quantum and classical object.…
Within quantum mechanics it is possible to assign a probability to the chance that a measurement has been made at a specific time t. However, the interpretation of such a probability is far from clear. We argue that a recent measuring…
Time is a parameter playing a central role in our most fundamental modelling of natural laws. Relativity theory shows that the comparison of times measured by different clocks depends on their relative motion and on the strength of the…
In this article we propose a solution to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. We point out that the measurement problem can be traced to an a priori notion of classicality in the formulation of quantum mechanics. If this notion of…
Based on a clear ontology of material individuals, we analyze in detail the factual semantics of quantum theory, and argue that the basic mathematical formalism of quantum theory is just okay with (a certain form of ) realism and that it is…
Quantum measurement is a physical process. A system and an apparatus interact for a certain time period (measurement time), and during this interaction, information about an observable is transferred from the system to the apparatus. In…
Time plays a crucial role in the intuitive understanding of the world around us. Within quantum mechanics, however, time is not usually treated as an observable quantity; it enters merely as a parameter in the laws of motion of physical…
The problem of time in the quantization of gravity arises from the fact that time in Schroedinger's equation is a parameter. This sets time apart from the spatial coordinates, represented by operators in quantum mechanics (QM). Thus "time"…
Time in quantum gravity is not a well-defined notion, despite its central role in the very definition of dynamics. Using the formalism of quantum geometrodynamics, we shortly review the problem and illustrate it with two proposed solutions.…
Classical, Quantum and Relativistic mechanics elect time and space as fundamentals, extracting the measure of motion -velocity- from this static space-time platform. Conversely, the timelessness of Statistical mechanics computes the…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
Endeavoring to formulate an exhaustive solution to the measurement problem in view of the theory of decoherence leads to a better understanding of the status of the collapse and of the emergence of classicality, thanks to a precise…
A practical way to deal with the problem of time in quantum cosmology and quantum gravity is proposed. The main tool is effective equations, which mainly restrict explicit considerations to semiclassical regimes but have the crucial…
Theories of quantum gravity generically presuppose or predict that the reality underlying relativistic spacetimes they are describing is significantly non-spatiotemporal. On pain of empirical incoherence, approaches to quantum gravity must…