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Related papers: A scalable tripartite Wigner's friend scenario

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A recent paper by two of us and co-workers, based on an extended Wigner's friend scenario, demonstrated that certain empirical correlations predicted by quantum theory (QT) violate inequalities derived from a set of metaphysical assumptions…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-09-20 Howard M. Wiseman , Eric G. Cavalcanti , Eleanor G. Rieffel

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

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

The original Wigner's friend paradox is a gedankenexperiment involving an observer described by an external agent. The paradox highlights the tension between unitary evolution and collapse in quantum theory, and is sometimes taken as…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-10-22 Matteo Lostaglio , Joseph Bowles

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

Wigner's thought experiment illustrates quantum theory's measurement problem by considering an observer who measures a quantum system inside a sealed lab, modeled unitarily by an outsider. Recent extensions of this thought experiment,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-15 Laurens Walleghem

We develop a means of simulating the evolution and measurement of a multipartite quantum state under discrete or continuous evolution using another quantum system with states and operators lying in a real Hilbert space. This extends…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-10-26 Matthew McKague , Michele Mosca , Nicolas Gisin

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

There has been a surge of recent interest in the Wigner's Friend paradox, sparking several novel thought experiments and no-go theorems. The main narrative has been that Wigner's Friend highlights a counterintuitive feature that is unique…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-01-22 Caroline L. Jones , Markus P. Mueller

We argue that Wigner's friend thought experiment does not support observer dependence of quantum states. An analysis in terms of history vectors suggests that quantum collapse is to be understood as collapse of histories rather than…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-06-09 Leonardo Castellani

An experiment by Proietti {\it et al} purporting to instantiate the `Wigner's Friend' thought experiment is discussed. It is pointed out that the stated implications of the experiment regarding the alleged irreconcilability of facts…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-30 R. E. Kastner

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…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-18 Laurens Walleghem , Rafael Wagner , Yìlè Yīng , David Schmid

Wigner's Friend-type paradoxes challenge the assumption that events are absolute -- that when we measure a system, we obtain a single result, which is not relative to anything or anyone else. These paradoxes highlight the tension between…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-23 Sumit Mukherjee , Jonte R. Hance

A classical computer simulating Schrodinger dynamics of a quantum system requires resources which scale exponentially with the size of the system, and is regarded as inefficient for such purposes. However, a quantum computer made up of a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-16 Ravi Shankar , Swathi S. Hegde , T. S. Mahesh

Quantum networks are the center of many of the recent advances in quantum science, not only leading to the discovery of new properties in the foundations of quantum theory but also allowing for novel communication and cryptography…

Quantum mechanics admits correlations that cannot be explained by local realistic models. Those most studied are the standard local hidden variable models, which satisfy the well-known Bell inequalities. To date, most works have focused on…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2017-06-01 Dylan J. Saunders , Adam J. Bennet , Cyril Branciard , Geoff J. Pryde

In a joint paper Jeff Bub and Itamar Pitowski argued that the quantum state represents `the credence function of a rational agent [...] who is updating probabilities on the basis of events that occur'. In the famous thought experiment…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-02-01 Veronika Baumann , Časlav Brukner

The Wigner's friend paradox concerns one of the most puzzling problems of quantum mechanics: the consistent description of multiple nested observers. Recently, a variation of Wigner's gedankenexperiment, introduced by Frauchiger and Renner,…

Typically, quantum mechanics is thought of as a linear theory with unitary evolution governed by the Schr\"odinger equation. While this is technically true and useful for a physicist, with regards to computation it is an unfortunately…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-04-20 Dax Enshan Koh , Murphy Yuezhen Niu , Theodore J. Yoder

Quantum simulation uses a well-known quantum system to predict the behavior of another quantum system. Certain limitations in this technique arise, however, when applied to specific problems, as we demonstrate with a theoretical and…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2009-11-13 Kenneth R. Brown , Robert J. Clark , Isaac L. Chuang