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Related papers: Wigner's friend in context

200 papers

In 1962, Eugene P. Wigner introduced a thought experiment that highlighted the incompatibility in quantum theory between unitary evolution and wave function reduction in a measurement. This work resulted in a class of thought experiments…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-05-19 Vinicius P. Rossi , Diogo O. Soares-Pinto

Wigner-friend scenarios -- in which external agents describe a closed laboratory containing a friend making a measurement -- highlight the difficulties inherent to quantum theory when accounting for measurements. In non-relativistic…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-09-13 J. Allam , A. Matzkin

Quantum theory in its conventional formulation is notoriously subject to various measurement-related paradoxes, as exemplified by the "Schrodinger's Cat" and "Wigner's Friend" thought experiments. It has been shown, for example by…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-04 R. E. Kastner

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

This paper provides a quantum-mechanical analysis of an artwork, `Wigner's friends,' by Diemut Strebe. The work consists of two telescopes, one on earth, one launched into space, and explores ideas of quantum correlations and quantum…

Popular Physics · Physics 2015-01-08 Seth Lloyd

Considering a complicated extension of a Wigner's friend scenario, Frauchiger and Renner (FR) allegedly showed that "quantum theory cannot consistently describe the use of itself". However, such a result has been under severe criticism, as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-06-30 R. Muciño , E. Okon

Recent developments in elementary quantum mechanics have seen a number of extraordinary claims regarding quantum behaviour, and even questioning internal consistency of the theory. These are, we argue, different disguises of what Feynman…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-03-15 D. Sokolovski , E. Akhmatskaya

A recent paper "Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent" [arXiv:1604.07422] by D. Frauchiger and R. Renner has attracted a considerable interest of a broader physics audience and shortly elicited a number of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-09-10 Igor Salom

Wigner's Friend scenarios push the boundaries of quantum theory by modeling agents, along with their memories storing measurement outcomes, as physical quantum systems. Extending these ideas beyond quantum theory, we ask: in which physical…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-08 Nuriya Nurgalieva , V. Vilasini

We discuss the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner based on an "extended Wigner's friend" thought experiment which is supposed to show that any single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics leads to inconsistent predictions if it is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-11-14 Dustin Lazarovici , Mario Hubert

We develop a new interpretation of quantum theory by combining insights from extended Wigner's friend scenarios and quantum causal modelling. In this interpretation, which synthesizes ideas from relational quantum mechanics and consistent…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-02-01 Nick Ormrod , Jonathan Barrett

The thought experiment called Wigner's Friend has experienced a renewal of interest for interrogating the meaning of intersubjectivity and objectivity in quantum mechanics. These new inquiries extend to investigations at the intersection of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-08-26 Gino Elia , Jennifer Carter , Robert Crease

Quantum mechanics started out as a theory to describe the smallest scales of energy in Nature. After a hundred years of development it is now routinely employed to describe, among others, quantum computers with thousands of qubits. This…

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

We describe the Wigner's-Friend scenario according to Wigner, then a similar but earlier version according to Everett. Wigner and Everett provide different resolutions of essentially the same paradox. Decoherence theory provides a third…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-16 Jay Lawrence

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 unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomena must, in principle, include a description of all relevant features of experimental arrangement" (Bohr). The measurement process is composed of pre-measurement (quantum correlation of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-04-12 Marek Żukowski , Marcin Markiewicz

It is commonly thought that observers in distinct branches of an Everettian multiverse cannot communicate without violating the linearity of quantum theory. Here we show a counterexample, demonstrating that inter-branch communication is in…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-28 Maria Violaris

Quantum mechanics has been subject to logical scrutiny since its inception. The behavior of quantum systems, which are fundamentally dissimilar from classical systems, often appears to point to a logical inconsistency in quantum mechanics,…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2026-04-01 Felipe Dilho Alves , João Carlos Alves Barata

A simple way, accessible to undergraduates, is given to understand measurements in quantum mechanics. The ensemble interpretation of quantum mechanics is natural and provides this simple access to the measurement problem. This paper…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-03-10 Anthony Rizzi