Related papers: No-Go Theorems: What Are They Good For?
An operational definition of contextuality is introduced which generalizes the standard notion in three ways: (1) it applies to arbitrary operational theories rather than just quantum theory, (2) it applies to arbitrary experimental…
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…
We argue that the most conservative geometric extension of Einstein gravity describing both positive and negative mass sources and observers is bimetric gravity and contains two copies of standard model matter which interact only…
In analogy with crystalline solids around us, Wilczek recently proposed the idea of "time crystals" as phases that spontaneously break the continuous time translation into a discrete subgroup. The proposal stimulated further studies and…
The probabilistic predictions of quantum theory are conventionally obtained from a special probabilistic axiom. But that is unnecessary because all the practical consequences of such predictions follow from the remaining, non-probabilistic,…
Facts happen at every interaction, but they are not absolute: they are relative to the systems involved in the interaction. Stable facts are those whose relativity can effectively be ignored. In this work, we describe how stable facts…
Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the…
Extended Wigner's friend no-go theorems provide a modern lens for investigating the measurement problem, by making precise the challenges that arise when one attempts to model agents as dynamical quantum systems. Most such no-go theorems…
Why is gauge symmetry so important in modern physics, given that one must eliminate it when interpreting what the theory represents? In this paper we discuss the sense in which gauge symmetry can be fruitfully applied to constrain the space…
Quantum computers take advantage of interfering quantum alternatives in order to handle problems that might be too time consuming with algorithms based on classical logic. Developing quantum computers requires new ways of thinking beyond…
A central aim of physics education research is to understand the processes of learning and use that understanding to inform instruction. To this end, researchers often conduct studies to measure the effect of classroom interventions on…
Goedel's results have had a great impact in diverse fields such as philosophy, computer sciences and fundamentals of mathematics. The fact that the rule of mathematical induction is contradictory with the rest of clauses used by Goedel to…
The PBR theorem is widely seen as one of the most important no-go theorems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. Recently, in Found. Phys. 53(3): 64 (2023), it has been argued that there is no reality to the PBR theorem using a pair of…
Noether's theorem is an elegant and powerful tool of classical mechanics, but it is of little to no consequence in discrete theories. Here we define and explore a discrete approach to covariant mechanics and show that within this framework…
The familiar theories of physics have the feature that the application of the theory to make predictions in specific circumstances can be done by means of an algorithm. We propose a more precise formulation of this feature --- one based on…
We analyze the recent no go theorem by Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph (PBR) concerning ontic and epistemic hidden variables. We define two fundamental requirements for the validity of the result. We finally compare the models satisfying the…
Despite several approaches proposed to operationally characterize quantum states of light-those that cannot be sampled with a positive distribution over classical states-most existing formulations suffer from limited practicality or rely on…
Well-founded fixed points have been used in several areas of knowledge representation and reasoning and to give semantics to logic programs involving negation. They are an important ingredient of approximation fixed point theory. We study…
Apart from the familiar structure firmly-rooted in the general relativistic field equations where the energy--momentum tensor has a null divergence i.e., it conserves, there exists a considerable number of extended theories of gravity…
The aim of this chapter is to present an introduction and also an overview of some of the most relevant results concerning positivity energy theorems in General Relativity. These theorems provide the answer to a long standing problem that…