Related papers: Unscrambling the Quantum Omelette
Determining the initial state of the universe is a challenging problem in quantum cosmology and we argue that the issue is intractable if the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are not modified in a nontrivial way. Namely a "standard"…
We raise the issue whether conventional quantum mechanics, which is not a hidden variable theory in the usual Jauch-Piron's sense, might nevertheless be a hidden variable theory in the sense recently conjectured by G. 't Hooft in his…
We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, statistically uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inflation. It has recently been argued that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist,…
In the tradition of toy models of quantum mechanics in vector spaces over finite fields (e.g., Schumacher and Westmoreland's "modal quantum theory"), one finite field stands out, 2, since vectors over 2 have an interpretation as natural…
Zurek claims to have derived Born's rule noncircularly in the context of an ontological no-collapse interpretation of quantum states, without any "deus ex machina imposition of the symptoms of classicality." After a brief review of Zurek's…
The behavior of quantum states at exceptional points and at critical points associated with quantum phase transitions is intriguing yet puzzling. In this study, we present an alternative method for obtaining the Berry potentials using the…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
Moments are expectation values of products of powers of position and momentum, taken over quantum states (or averages over a set of classical particles). For free particles, the evolution in the quantum case is closely related to that of a…
Marchildon's (favorable) assessment (quant-ph/0303170, to appear in Found. Phys.) of the Pondicherry interpretation of quantum mechanics raises several issues, which are addressed. Proceeding from the assumption that quantum mechanics is…
This paper gives a thorough critique of the foundations of quantum physics in its mainstream interpretation (i.e., treating pure states as primitives, without reference to hidden variables, and without modifications of the quantum laws).…
The development of the new logic of partitions (= equivalence relations) dual to the usual Boolean logic of subsets, and its quantitative version as the new logical theory of information provide the basic mathematical concepts to describe…
Recently, it has been argued that quantum mechanics is complete, and that quantum states vectors are necessarily in one-to-one correspondence with the elements of reality, under the assumptions that quantum theory is correct and that…
We establish a sharp quantum advantage in determining the parity (even/odd) of an unknown permutation applied to any number $n \ge 3$ of particles. Classically, this is impossible with fewer than $n$ labels, being that the success is…
Quantum and classical mechanics are derived using four natural physical principles: (1) the laws of nature are invariant under time evolution, (2) the laws of nature are invariant under tensor composition, (3) the laws of nature are…
The usual interpretational rule of quantum mechanics which states that outcomes do not occur when their weights are zero is changed so as to preclude outcomes with weights less than a small but positive value. With this "positive…
Motivated by recent proposals (Bialynicki-Birula, Mycielski; Haag, Bannier; Weinberg; Doebner, Goldin) for nonlinear quantum mechanical evolution equations for pure states some principal difficulties in the framework of usual quantum…
A new approach to quantum mechanics based on independence of the Continuum Hypothesis is proposed. In one-dimensional case, it is shown that the properties of the set of intermediate cardinality coincide with quantum phenomenology.
What is the quantum state of the universe? Although there have been several interesting suggestions, the question remains open. In this paper, I consider a natural choice for the universal quantum state arising from the Past Hypothesis, a…
It is shown that the independence of the continuum hypothesis points to the unique definite status of the set of intermediate cardinality: the intermediate set exists only as a subset of continuum. This latent status is a consequence of…