Related papers: No purification ontology, no quantum paradoxes
Quantum theory demands that, in contrast to classical physics, not all properties can be simultaneously well defined. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a manifestation of this fact. Another important corollary arises that there can be…
Given the algebra of observables of a quantum system subject to selection rules, a state can be represented by different density matrices. As a result, different von Neumann entropies can be associated with the same state. Motivated by a…
Agreement theorems are no-go results about rational disagreement: if two agents start from a common prior and their posterior beliefs are common knowledge, they cannot assign different probabilities to the same event. Standard treatments of…
The information encoded in a quantum system is generally spoiled by the influences of its environment, leading to a transition from pure to mixed states. Reducing the mixedness of a state is a fundamental step in the quest for a feasible…
Both at formal and philosophical levels, decades of efforts have been devoted to a deciphering of the `quantum enigma', the `crazy way quantum objects behave', to quote R.P. Feynman's words. We posit that the enigma cannot recede without…
Core quantum postulates including the superposition principle and the unitarity of evolutions are natural and strikingly simple. I show that -- when supplemented with a limited version of predictability (captured in the textbook accounts by…
This paper reviews and suggests a resolution of the problem of definite outcomes of measurement. This problem, also known as "Schrodinger's cat," has long posed an apparent paradox because the state resulting from a measurement appears to…
The entangled "Schrodinger's cat state" of a quantum and its measurement apparatus is not a paradoxical superposition of states but is instead a non-paradoxical superposition of nonlocal coherent correlations between states: An un-decayed…
Feynman's formulation of quantum theory is remarkable in its combination of formal simplicity and computational power. However, as a formulation of the abstract structure of quantum theory, it is incomplete as it does not account for most…
The pure quantum entanglement is generalized to the case of mixed compound states on an operator algebra to include the classical and quantum encodings as particular cases. The true quantum entanglements are characterized by quantum…
Schrodinger's famous cat has long been misunderstood. According to quantum theory and experiments with entangled systems, an entangled state such as the Schrodinger's cat state is neither a superposition of states of either subsystem nor a…
A common way of stating the non-cloning theorem -- one of distinguishing characteristics of quantum theory -- is that one cannot make a copy of an arbitrary unknown quantum state. Even though this theorem is an important part of the ongoing…
A new axiomatic characterization with a minimum of conditions for entropy as a function on the set of states in quantum mechanics is presented. Traditionally unspoken assumptions are unveiled and replaced by proven consequences of the…
We develop two general approaches to characterising the manipulation of quantum states by means of probabilistic protocols constrained by the limitations of some quantum resource theory. First, we give a general necessary condition for the…
Bit commitment protocols, whose security is based on the laws of quantum mechanics alone, are generally held to be impossible on the basis of a concealment-bindingness tradeoff. A strengthened and explicit impossibility proof has been given…
In the present paper, the decision problem of the Schr\"odinger equation (asking whether or not a given Hamiltonian operator has the nonempty solution set) is represented as a logical statement. As it is shown in the paper, the law of…
The manipulation of quantum coherence is one of the principal issues in the resource theory of coherence, with two critical topics being the purification and enhancement of coherence. Here, we present two no-go theorems for the…
Within the framework of the individuality interpretation of quantum theory (QT), the basic equations of QT cannot be derived from the basic equations of classical mechanics (CM). The unbridgeable gap between CM and QT is given by the fact…
We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes, but leaves the theory's basic dynamical content…
We consider whether two copies of a noisy entangled state can be transformed into a single copy of greater purity using local operations and classical communication. We show that it is never possible to achieve such a purification with…