Related papers: Qualitative individuation in permutation-invariant…
How best to think about quantum systems under permutation invariance is a question that has received a great deal of attention in the literature. But very little attention has been paid to taking seriously the proposal that permutation…
We consider the problem of quantum behavior in the finite background. Introduction of continuum or other infinities into physics leads only to technical complications without any need for them in description of empirical observations. The…
In this article, we discuss the identity and indistinguishability of quantum systems and the consequent need to introduce an extra postulate in Quantum Mechanics to correctly describe situations involving indistinguishable particles. This…
Quantum systems of indistinguishable particles are commonly described using the formalism of second quantisation, which relies on the assumption that any admissible quantum state must be either symmetric or anti-symmetric under particle…
In a series of recent papers, Simon Saunders, Fred Muller and Michael Seevinck have collectively argued, against the philosophy of quantum mechanics folklore, that some non-trivial version of Leibniz's principle of the identity of…
The study of entanglement in systems composed of identical particles raises interesting challenges with far-reaching implications in both, our fundamental understanding of the physics of composite quantum systems, and our capability of…
Although the present paper looks upon the formal apparatus of quantum mechanics as a calculus of correlations, it goes beyond a purely operationalist interpretation. Having established the consistency of the correlations with the existence…
Quantum mechanics for a four-state-system is derived from classical statistics. Entanglement, interference, the difference between identical fermions or bosons and the unitary time evolution find an interpretation within a classical…
Quantum systems invariant under particle exchange are either Bosons or Fermions, even though quantum theory in principle admits more general behavior under permutations. But why do we not observe such "paraparticles" in nature? The analysis…
Quantum coherence, a basic feature of quantum mechanics residing in superpositions of quantum states, is a resource for quantum information processing. Coherence emerges in a fundamentally different way for nonidentical and identical…
The purpose of this short article is to build on the work of Ghirardi, Marinatto and Weber (Ghirardi, Marinatto & Weber 2002; Ghirardi & Marinatto 2003, 2004, 2005) and Ladyman, Linnebo and Bigaj (2013), in supporting a redefinition of…
\noindent In our contribution to this volume we deal with \emph{discrete} symmetries: these are symmetries based upon groups with a discrete set of elements (generally a set of elements that can be enumerated by the positive integers). In…
It often goes unnoticed that, even for a finite number of degrees of freedom, the canonical commutation relations have many inequivalent irreducible unitary representations; the free particle and a particle in a box provide examples that…
The Fock space of a system of indistinguishable particles is isomorphic (in a non-unique way) to the state-space of a composite i.e., many-modes, quantum system. One can then discuss quantum entanglement for fermionic as well as bosonic…
The Hermiticity condition in quantum mechanics required for the characterisation of (a) physical observables and (b) generators of unitary motions can be relaxed into a wider class of operators whose eigenvalues are real and whose…
The notion of "closed systems" in Quantum Mechanics is discussed. For this purpose, we study two models of a quantum-mechanical system $P$ spatially far separated from the "rest of the universe" $Q$. Under reasonable assumptions on the…
Quantum entanglement manifests itself in non-local correlations between the constituents of a system. In its simplest realization, a measurement on one subsystem is affected by a prior measurement on its partner, irrespective of their…
The measurement conundrum seems to have plagued quantum mechanics for so long that impressions of an inconsistency amongst its axioms have spawned. A demonstration that such purported inconsistency is fictitious may then be in order and is…
We present a general description of separable states in Quantum Mechanics. In particular, our result gives an easy proof that inseparabitity (or entanglement) is a pure quantum (noncommutative) notion. This implies that distinction between…
A formulation of quantum mechanics, which begins by postulating assertions for individual physical systems, is given. The statistical predictions of quantum mechanics for infinite ensembles are then derived from its assertions for…