Related papers: Statistical Evidence Against Simple Forms of Wavef…
Two thought experiments are analyzed, revealing that the quantum state of the universe does not contain definitive evidence of the wavefunction collapse. The first thought experiment shows that unitary quantum evolution alone can account…
Perhaps the quantum state represents information about reality, and not reality directly. Wave function collapse is then possibly no more mysterious than a Bayesian update of a probability distribution given new data. We consider models for…
We show using a realistic Hamiltonian-type model that definite outcomes of quantum measurements may emerge from quantum evolution of pure states, i.e quantum dynamics provides a deterministic collapse of the wavefunction in a quantum…
We apply the formalism of quantum measurement theory to the idealized measurement of the position of a particle with an optical interferometer, finding that the backaction of counting entangled photons systematically collapses the…
Reduction is shown to be a possible consequence of the basic principles of quantum mechanics, involving no branching of the quantum state of the universe. The key feature of a measurement is attributed to the creation of macroscopic germs…
The effective coupling `constants' of physics, especially the cosmological constant, are observed to have highly biophilic values. If this is not a hugely improbable accident, or a consequence of some mysterious logical necessity or of some…
Wavefunction collapse is usually seen as a discontinuous violation of the unitary evolution of a quantum system, caused by the observation. Moreover, the collapse appears to be nonlocal in a sense which seems at odds with General…
Four problematic circumstances are considered, involving models which describe dynamical wavefunction collapse toward energy eigenstates, for which it is shown that wavefunction collapse of macroscopic objects does not work properly. In one…
The specific advance of this work is to propose a mechanism by which superpositions collapse during measurement of the separated subsystems of entangled quantum states. It is shown how the phase that locks together entangled states plays a…
The undoing of quantum measurements is discussed in the broader context of irreversibility in physics. We give explicit examples of how a wavefunction can be uncollapsed in two solid-state experimental set-ups. Wavefunction uncollapse shows…
One attractive interpretation of quantum mechanics is the ensemble interpretation, where Quantum Mechanics merely describes a statistical ensemble of objects and not individual objects. But this interpretation does not address why the…
Because quantum measurements have probabilistic outcomes they can seem to violate conservation laws in individual experiments. Despite these appearances, strict conservation of momentum, orbital angular momentum, and energy can be shown to…
The physics of wavefunction collapse from Hilbert space to a classically real spacetime, accompanied by wave-particle duality, is, fundamentally, reduction of the complex psi to reality. We introduce new terminology for new physics. The…
Testable predictions of quantum mechanics are invariant under time reversal. But the change of the quantum state in time is not so, neither in the collapse nor in the no-collapse interpretations of the theory. This fact challenges the…
Could we hear the pop of a wave-function collapse, and if so, what would it sound like? There exist reconstructions or modifications of quantum mechanics (collapse models) where this archetypal signature of randomness exists and can in…
Weak measurements of photon position can be used to obtain direct experimental evidence of the wavefunction of a photon between generation and ultimate detection. Significantly, these measurement results can also be understood as complex…
Almost a century after the development of quantum mechanics, we still do not have a consensus on the process of collapse of wavefunctions. Some theories require the intervention of a conscious observer while some see it as a stochastic…
Measurements cause quantum wave functions to collapse. In tackling this elusive issue, we embark on the exploration of entropy exhibited by single-qubit quantum systems. Our findings surprisingly challenge the conventional law of entropy…
The reconstruction of quantum states from a sufficient set of experimental data can be achieved with arbitrarily weak measurement interactions. Since such weak measurements have negligible back-action, the quantum state reconstruction is…
We present a new interpretation of the terms superposition, entanglement, and measurement that appear in quantum mechanics. We hypothesize that the structure of the wave function for a quantum system at the sub-Planck scale has a…