Related papers: The measurement problem is the measurement problem…
The quantum measurement problem is formulated in the form of an insolubility theorem that states the impossibility of obtaining, for all available object preparations, a mixture of states of the compound object and apparatus system that…
Simultaneous estimation of multiple parameters in quantum metrological models is complicated by factors relating to the (i) existence of a single probe state allowing for optimal sensitivity for all parameters of interest, (ii) existence of…
There are four reasons why our present knowledge and understanding of quantum mechanics could be regarded as incomplete. Firstly, the principle of linear superposition has not been experimentally tested for position eigenstates of objects…
A variant of the von Neumann-Wigner Interpretation is proposed. It does not make use of the familiar language of wave functions and observers. Instead it pictures the state of the physical world as a vector in a Fock space and, therefore…
Does the measurement of a quantum system necessarily break Lorentz invariance? We present a simple model of a detector that measures the spacetime localization of a relativistic particle in a Lorentz invariant manner. The detector does not…
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…
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…
An analysis has been performed of the theories and postulates advanced by von Neumann, London and Bauer, and Wigner, concerning the role that consciousness might play in the collapse of the wave function, which has become known as the…
We argue that it is fundamentally impossible to recover information about quantum superpositions when a system has interacted with a sufficiently large number of degrees of freedom of the environment. This is due to the fact that gravity…
In a recent result, Frauchiger and Renner argue that if quantum theory accurately describes complex systems like observers who perform measurements, then "we are forced to give up the view that there is one single reality." Following a…
Quantum theory encounters a difficulty when attempting to describe recording devices. If the recording is of events in which quantum uncertainty plays a role, such as an experiment on a quantum system, quantum theory is unable to correctly…
It is generally agreed that decoherence theory is, if not a complete answer, at least a great step forward towards a solution of the quantum measurement problem. It is shown here however that in the cases in which a sentient being is…
Quantum theory famously entails the existence of incompatible measurements; pairs of observables which cannot be simultaneously measured to arbitrary precision. Incompatibility is widely regarded to be a uniquely quantum phenomenon, linked…
Quantum measurement finds the observed system in a collapsed state, rather than in the state predicted by the Schr\"odinger equation. Yet there is a relatively spread opinion that the wavefunction collapse can be explained by unitary…
Here we propose a pair of experiments to distinguish the recently proposed "slicing theory" of quantum measurement, which gives a transient many worlds picture, and decoherence. Since these two theories are essentially "opposites" in their…
By imposing system-observer symmetry on the von Neumann description of measurement, it is shown that the quantum measurement problem is structurally equivalent to a familiar reverse-engineering problem: that of describing the behavior of an…
How well can multiple incompatible observables be implemented by a single measurement? This is a fundamental problem in quantum mechanics with wide implications for the performance optimization of numerous tasks in quantum information…
The superposition of quantum states lies at the heart of physics and has been recently found to serve as a versatile resource for quantum information protocols, defining the notion of quantum coherence. In this contribution, we report on…
In this paper we provide a general account of the causal models which attempt to provide a solution to the famous measurement problem of Quantum Mechanics (QM). We will argue that --leaving aside instrumentalism which restricts the physical…
We prove that the quantum measurement process contains the same warping mechanism that occurs in categorical perception, a phenomenon ubiquitous in human perception. This warping causes stimuli belonging to the same category to be perceived…