Related papers: Annotations regarding the Oxford Questions
We review recent work that employs the framework of logical inference to establish a bridge between data gathered through experiments and their objective description in terms of human-made concepts. It is shown that logical inference…
Two recent studies have presented new information relevant to the transition from quantum behavior to classical behavior, and related this to parameters characterizing the universe as a whole. The present study based on a separate approach…
Many scientists seeking to understand the quantum mechanics of measurement situations (Copenhagen quantum theory) agree on its overwhelmingly successful algorithms to predict the outcomes of laboratory measurements but disagree on what…
At the 1927 Solvay conference, Einstein presented a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the incompleteness of the quantum mechanical description of reality. In the following years, the thought experiment was picked up and modified by…
This is a preliminary version of an article to appear in the forthcoming Ashgate Companion to the New Philosophy of Physics. I don't advocate any particular approach to the measurement problem (not here, at any rate!) but I do focus on the…
It is control that turns scientific knowledge into useful technology: in physics and engineering it provides a systematic way for driving a system from a given initial state into a desired target state with minimized expenditure of energy…
By comparing Schr\"odinger's cat with its classical counterpart, I show that a quantum superposition should be understood as an expectation over possible eigenstates weighted by wave-like probabilities. Upon the occurrence of a certain…
The spread of the wave-function, or quantum uncertainty, is a key notion in quantum mechanics. At leading order, it is characterized by the quadratic moments of the position and momentum operators. These evolve and fluctuate independently…
In the Schr\"odinger-cat gedanken experiment a cat is in a quantum superposition of two macroscopically distinct states, alive and dead.The paradoxical interpretation of quantum mechanics is that the cat is not in one state or the other,…
This note is the written version of conversations with young colleagues on unofficial history, general ideas, unexpected facts and open problems concerning tilting theory.
In this note I introduce a mysterious approximation called the rotating wave approximation (RWA) to undergraduates or non-experts who are interested in both Mathematics and Quantum Optics. In Quantum Optics it plays a very important role in…
Theories including a collapse mechanism have been presented various years ago. They are based on a modification of standard quantum mechanics in which nonlinear and stochastic terms are added to the evolution equation. Their principal…
A model of the Einstein-Bohr double-slit experiment is formulated in a fully quantum theoretical setting. In this model, the state and dynamics of a movable wall that has the double slits in it, as well as the state of a particle incoming…
In a series of papers in the last ten years, various aspects of the mathematical foundations of the quantum theory of atoms in molecules have been considered by this author and his coworkers in some details. Although these considerations…
The legacy of Post-Modernism is renewed attention to the issues of knowledge production. Now that post-modernism is out of fashion, the emphasis is no longer on the "cursed" questions formulated by its adepts. The main issue is no longer…
We briefly review a number of major features of the approach to quantum measurement theory based on environment-induced decoherence of the measuring apparatus, and summarize our observations in the form of a couple of general principles…
Table of contents: Editorial 1 Correspondents 3 Some recent work in general relativistic Astrophysics 4 Two dimensional black holes 6 Resonant-mass gravitational wave detectors: an update 8 Universality and scaling in gravitational collapse…
The entangled Schrodinger cat state obtained immediately upon measurement of a superposed two-state quantum system is often considered paradoxical because it appears to predict two macroscopically different outcomes, such as an alive and…
We study a recently proposed modified Schr\"{o}dinger equation having an added nonlinear term, which gives rise to disentanglement. The process of quantum measurement is explored for the case of a pair of coupled spins. We find that the…
Recent progress in electro-optic sampling has allowed direct access to the fluctuations of the electromagnetic ground state. Here, we present a theoretical formalism that allows for an in-depth characterisation and interpretation of such…