Related papers: Quantum measurements are physical processes. Comme…
A number of issues related to measurement show that self-consistency is lacking in quantum mechanics as this theory has been generally understood. Each issue is presented as a point in this paper. Each point can be resolved by incorporating…
It has been suggested that consciousness plays an important role in quantum mechanics as it is necessary for the collapse of wave function during the measurement. Furthermore, this idea has spawned a symmetrical proposal: a possibility that…
A goal of most interpretations of quantum mechanics is to avoid the apparent intrusion of the observer into the measurement process. Such intrusion is usually seen to arise because observation somehow selects a single actuality from among…
Several new physics experiments in 1998 were performed and analyzed to show the subtlety of quantum theory, including the "wave-particle duality" and the non-separability of two-particle entangled state. Here it is shown that the…
One would not think that thought experiments could matter to nature, for they are a humble human device. Yet quantum mechanics very naturally frames thought experiments (as distinct from precisely defining what exists). They exemplify the…
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our…
A new, realist interpretation of the quantum measurement processes is given. In this scenario a quantum measurement is a non-equilibrium phase transition in a ``resonant cavity'' formed by the entire physical universe including all its…
The term "measurement" in quantum theory (as well as in other physical theories) is ambiguous: It is used to describe both an experience - e.g., an observation in an experiment - and an interaction with the system under scrutiny. If doing…
It is argued that the nature of probability is essentially informational rather than physical and that quantum mechanical predictions should be viewed as logical inferences made on the basis of the information content of a given…
In this mainly pedagogical article, we discuss under what circumstances measurements play a special role in quantum processes. In particular we discuss the following facts which appear to be a common area of confusion: i) from a fundamental…
The double slit interference experiment has been famously described by Richard Feynman as containing the "only mystery of quantum mechanics". The history of quantum mechanics is intimately linked with the discovery of the dual nature of…
The double slit experiment provides a classic example of both interference and the effect of observation in quantum physics. When particles are sent individually through a pair of slits, a wave-like interference pattern develops, but no…
At present, there are two possible, and equally plausible, explanations for the physics of quantum measurement. The first explanation, known as the many-worlds interpretation, does not require any modification of quantum mechanics, and…
Consideration of the von Neumann measurement process underlying interference experiments shows that the uncertainty in the incoming wave, responsible for its interference, translates during measurement into an uncertainty at the measuring…
Using a very simple Gedankenexperiment, I remind the reader that (contrary to what happens in classical mechanics) the energy of a quantum system is inevitably increased just by performing (some) textbook measurements on it. As a direct…
It is argued that Feynman's rules for evaluating probabilities, combined with von Neumann's principle of psycho-physical parallelism, help avoid inconsistencies, often associated with quantum theory. The former allows one to assign…
We present the quantum measurement problem as a serious physics problem. Serious because without a resolution, quantum theory is not complete, as it does not tell how one should - in principle - perform measurements. It is physical in the…
It is shown that neither the wave picture nor the ordinary particle picture offers a satisfactory explanation of the double-slit experiment. The Physicists who have been successful in formulating theories in the Newtonian Paradigm with its…
In this paper, we present a thought experiment that demonstrates that the equivalence of quantum reduced states and statistical mixed states of ensembles is not merely a simple mathematical formulation in quantum mechanics, but rather…
Quantum mechanics is usually formulated with an implicit assumption that agents who can observe and interact with the world are external to it and have a classical memory. However, there is no accepted way to define the quantum-classical…