Related papers: Quantum from principles
After more than a century since its birth, Quantum Theory still eludes our understanding. If asked to describe it, we have to resort to abstract and ad hoc principles about complex Hilbert spaces. How is it possible that a fundamental…
Quantum theory can be derived from purely informational principles. Five elementary axioms-causality, perfect distinguishability, ideal compression, local distinguishability, and pure conditioning-define a broad class of theories of…
We give a condensed and accessible summary of a recent derivation of quantum theory from information-theoretic principles, and use it to study the consequences of this and other reconstructions for our conceptual understanding of the…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
Why are the laws of physics formulated in terms of complex Hilbert spaces? Are there natural and consistent modifications of quantum theory that could be tested experimentally? This book chapter gives a self-contained and accessible summary…
In this paper we derive the complex Hilbert space formalism of quantum theory from four simple information theoretic axioms. It is shown that quantum theory is the only non classical probabilistic theory satisfying the following axioms:…
It is shown that the basic equations of quantum theory can be obtained from a straightforward application of logical inference to experiments for which there is uncertainty about individual events and for which the frequencies of the…
In the present work, quantum theory is founded on the framework of consciousness, in contrast to earlier suggestions that consciousness might be understood starting from quantum theory. The notion of streams of consciousness, usually…
The usual formulation of quantum theory is rather abstract. In recent work I have shown that we can, nevertheless, obtain quantum theory from five reasonable axioms. Four of these axioms are obviously consistent with both classical…
We present an information-theoretic interpretation of quantum formalism based on a Bayesian framework and devoid of any extra axiom or principle. Quantum information is construed as a technique for analyzing a logical system subject to…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
The rather unintuitive nature of quantum theory has led numerous people to develop sets of (physically motivated) principles that can be used to derive quantum mechanics from the ground up, in order to better understand where the structure…
The usual formulation of quantum theory is based on rather obscure axioms (employing complex Hilbert spaces, Hermitean operators, and the trace rule for calculating probabilities). In this paper it is shown that quantum theory can be…
We reconstruct the explicit formalism of qubit quantum theory from elementary rules on an observer's information acquisition. Our approach is purely operational: we consider an observer O interrogating a system S with binary questions and…
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its…
Quantum theory provides an extremely accurate description of fundamental processes in physics. It thus seems likely that the theory is applicable beyond the, mostly microscopic, domain in which it has been tested experimentally. Here we…
In this thesis I present a short review of ideas in quantum information theory. The first chapter contains introductory material, sketching the central ideas of probability and information theory. Quantum mechanics is presented at the level…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
While complex numbers are essential in mathematics, they are not needed to describe physical experiments, expressed in terms of probabilities, hence real numbers. Physics however aims to explain, rather than describe, experiments through…
Quantum information theory is the study of the achievable limits of information processing within quantum mechanics. Many different types of information can be accommodated within quantum mechanics, including classical information, coherent…