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Related papers: Wigner's friend as a rational agent

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Wigner's friend experiment and its modern extensions display the ambiguity of the quantum mechanical description regarding the assignment of quantum states. While the friend applies the state-update rule to the system upon observing an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-22 Flavio Del Santo , Gonzalo Manzano , Caslav Brukner

The Wigner's friend thought experiment was intended to illustrate the difficulty one has in describing an agent as a quantum system when that agent performs a measurement. While it does pose a challenge to the orthodox interpretation of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-09-12 David Schmid , Yìlè Yīng , Matthew Leifer

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-10-19 John B. DeBrota , Christopher A. Fuchs , Ruediger Schack

The Wigner's friend type of thought experiments manifest the conceptual challenge on how different observers can have consistent descriptions of a quantum measurement event. In this paper, we analyze the extended version of Wigner's friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-11-12 Jianhao M. Yang

The Wigner's friend experiment is a thought experiment in which a so-called superobserver (Wigner) observes another observer (the friend) who has performed a quantum measurement on a physical system. In this setup Wigner treats the friend,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-09-25 Veronika Baumann , Časlav Brukner

Predictions of quantum theory have been confirmed experimentally in the microscopic domain with no known exceptions. This success motivates physicists to assume universal validity of the theory. To put the predictions of the quantum theory…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-04-17 Jindřich Krčmář

We introduce a software package that allows users to design and run simulations of thought experiments in quantum theory. In particular, it covers cases where several reasoning agents are modelled as quantum systems, such as Wigner's friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-09-15 Nuriya Nurgalieva , Simon Mathis , Lídia del Rio , Renato Renner

We take a fresh look at Wigner's Friend thought-experiment and some of its more recent variants and extensions, such as the Frauchiger-Renner (FR) Paradox. We discuss various solutions proposed in the literature, focusing on a few…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-04-09 Alexandru Baltag , Sonja Smets

The notion of probability plays a crucial role in quantum mechanics. It appears in quantum mechanics as the Born rule. In modern mathematics which describes quantum mechanics, however, probability theory means nothing other than measure…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-22 Kohtaro Tadaki

The place and role of an Observer in quantum mechanics has been a subject of an ongoing debate since the theory's inception. Wigner brought this question to the fore in a celebrated scenario in which a super-Observer observes a Friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-09-14 A. Matzkin , D. Sokolovski

The paradox of Wigner's friend challenges the objectivity of description in quantum theory. A pragmatist interpretation can meet this challenge by judicious appeal to decoherence. On this interpretation, quantum theory provides situated…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-06-22 Richard Healey

The notorious Wigner's friend thought experiment (and modifications thereof) has in recent years received renewed interest especially due to new arguments that force us to question some of the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. In…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-05-18 Philippe Allard Guérin , Veronika Baumann , Flavio Del Santo , Časlav Brukner

The Wigner's Friend (WF) thought experiment concerns quantum measurements by a 'superobserver' of an observer measuring a quantum system. Variations on the setup and its extended versions have seen a resurgence in recent years, in light of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-30 Tom Rivlin , Sophie Engineer , Veronika Baumann

In a recent no-go theorem [Bong et al, Nature Physics (2020)], we proved that the predictions of unitary quantum mechanics for an extended Wigner's friend scenario are incompatible with any theory satisfying three metaphysical assumptions,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-03-25 Eric G. Cavalcanti

The description of Wigner-friend scenarios -- in which external agents describe a closed laboratory containing a friend making a measurement -- remains problematic due to the ambiguous nature of quantum measurements. One option is to…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-10-16 J. Allam , A. Matzkin

Quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories; its predictions agree with experimental observations to an extremely high accuracy. However, the bare formalism of quantum theory does not provide straightforward answers to…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-06-11 Nuriya Nurgalieva , Renato Renner

There has been an upsurge of interest in the consequences for quantum physics of the so-called Wigner's Friend Paradox. In its original formulation, the paradox has been turned inside out, and virtually every aspect of it has been looked…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-28 Julio C. F. Silva , B. F. Rizzuti , Cristhiano Duarte

The Extended Wigner's Friend thought experiment, which involves a quantum system with an agent who draws conclusions based on the results of a measurement of a quantum state provided in two nonorthogonal versions by another agent, led its…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-11-15 Szymon Łukaszyk

The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically…

The Wigner's Friend thought experiment stands as one of the most intellectually provocative and challenging conceptual puzzles in quantum mechanics. It compels us to confront profound questions concerning the fundamental nature of reality,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-25 Herve Zwirn
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