Related papers: Postulates and measurements in Everett's Quantum M…
Current thinking on the interpretation of quantum physics is reviewed, with special detail given to the Copenhagen and Everett many-worlds interpretations.
Zurek's derivation of Born's rule using envariance (invariance due to entanglement) is considered to capture the probability in full generality, but only as applied to measurement of a quantum observable. Contrariwise, textbook formulations…
I discuss a set of strong, but probabilistically intelligible, axioms from which one can {\em almost} derive the appratus of finite dimensional quantum theory. Stated informally, these require that systems appear completely classical as…
A type of mechanics will be presented that possesses some distinctive properties. On the one hand, its physical description & rules of operation are readily comprehensible & intuitively clear. On the other, it fully satisfies all observable…
In this paper, without any priori assumption about the post-measurement state of system, we will examine how this state is restricted by assuming each of these following assumptions. First, by using this reasonable assumption that two…
Hugh Everett III presented pure wave mechanics, sometimes referred to as the many-worlds interpretation, as a solution to the quantum measurement problem. While pure wave mechanics is an objectively deterministic physical theory with no…
Everett's "Relative State Formulation of Quantum Mechanics" (RSQM), which appeared in Reviews of Modern Physics, is based on his thesis "The Theory of the Universal Wavefunction". The most noteworthy property of these works is the claim by…
To elucidate ideal measurements, one must explain how individual events emerge from quantum theory which deals with statistical ensembles, and how different may end up with different final states. This so-called "measurement problem" is…
For a projective measurement, the Born rule provides the probability for an outcome in terms of the inner product between a projector and a quantum state. If the projector represents a pure entangled state and the state for a composite…
A "geometric" intepretation of probability is proposed, modelled on the treatment of tense in 4-dimensional spacetime. It is applied to Everett's approach to quantum mechanics, as formulated in terms of consistent histories. Standard…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
This chapter provides a tutorial overview of first principles methods to describe the properties of matter at the ground state or equilibrium. It begins with a brief introduction to quantum and statistical mechanics for predicting the…
During many years since the birth of quantum mechanics, instrumentalist interpretations prevailed: the meaning of the theory was expressed in terms of measurements results. But in the last decades, several attempts to interpret it from a…
We propose a pedagogical presentation of measurement in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation. In this heterodox interpretation, the position of a quantum particle exists and is piloted by the phase of the wave function. We show how this…
The notion of equality between two observables will play many important roles in foundations of quantum theory. However, the standard probabilistic interpretation based on the conventional Born formula does not give the probability of…
A generalized Bloch sphere, in which the states of a quantum entity of arbitrary dimension are geometrically represented, is investigated and further extended, to also incorporate the measurements. This extended representation constitutes a…
A theory recently proposed by the author aims to explain decoherence and the thermodynamical behaviour of closed systems within a conservative, unitary, framework for quantum gravity by assuming that the operators tied to the gravitational…
In this paper, we extend the standard formalism of quantum mechanics to a quantum theory for a total system including one internal measuring apparatus. The internality of the measuring apparatus implies that different decomposition of a…
Under the principle that quantum mechanical observables are invariant under relevant symmetry transformations, we explore how the usual, non-invariant quantities may capture measurement statistics. Using a relativisation mapping, viewed as…
The result of a physical measurement depends on the timescale of the experimental probe. In solid-state systems, this simple quantum mechanical principle has far-reaching consequences: the interplay of several degrees of freedom close to…