Related papers: Completely real? A critical note on the claims by …
The notorious quantum measurement problem brings out the difficulty to reconcile two quantum postulates: the unitary evolution of closed quantum systems and the wave-function collapse after a measurement. This problematics is particularly…
An open problem posed by Milner asks for a proof that a certain axiomatisation, which Milner showed is sound with respect to bisimilarity for regular expressions, is also complete. One of the main difficulties of the problem is the lack of…
Little effort has been devoted to studying generalised notions or models of (un)predictability, yet is an important concept throughout physics and plays a central role in quantum information theory, where key results rely on the supposed…
We start with a discussion of the use of mathematics to model the real world then justify the role of Hilbert space formalism for such modelling in the general context of quantum logic. Following this, the incompleteness of the…
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…
Recent experiments (gedanken or otherwise) and theorems in quantum mechanics (QM), such as new iterations on Wigner's friend and delayed choice, have led many people to claim that QM is not compatible with determinate and intersubjectively…
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…
Recently, Colbeck and Renner (2011) [arXiv:1005.5173] published a theorem that appears to be stronger than the Bell (1964) theorem in a way that is more significant than the other variations of Bell's theorem that have been published in 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…
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…
At present, quantum theory leaves unsettled which quantities ontologically, physically exist in a quantum system. Do observables such as energy and position have meaningful values only at the precise moment of measurement, as in the…
Recently, it has been argued [arXiv:1111.6597, arXiv:1005.5173] that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumption that quantum mechanics is correct and that measurement settings…
Despite the unparalleled accuracy of quantum-theoretical predictions across an enormous range of phenomena, the theory's foundations are still in doubt. The theory deviates radically from classical physics, predicts counterintuitive…
Knowing and guessing, these are two essential epistemological pillars in the theory of quantum-mechanical measurement. As formulated quantum mechanics is a statistical theory. In general, a priori unknown states can be completely determined…
Evolution of a physical quantum state vector is described as governed by two distinct physical laws: Continuous, unitary time evolution and a relativistically covariant reduction process. In previous literature, it was concluded that a…
We present a game-theoretic perspective on the problems of quantum state estimation and quantum cloning. This enables us to show why the focus on universal machines and the different measures of success, as employed in previous works, are…
We suggest solving the measurement problem by postulating the existence of a special future final boundary condition for the universe. Although this is an extension of the way boundary conditions are usually chosen (in terrestrial…
The Consistent Histories (CH) formalism aims at a quantum mechanical framework which could be applied even to the universe as a whole. CH stresses the importance of histories for quantum mechanics, as opposed to measurements, and maintains…
It has recently been argued that the inability to measure the absolute phase of an electromagnetic field prohibits the representation of a laser's output as a quantum optical coherent state. This argument has generally been considered…
State representations summarize our knowledge about a system. When unobservable quantities are introduced the state representation is typically no longer unique. However, this non-uniqueness does not affect subsequent inferences based on…