Related papers: A computer scientist's reconstruction of quantum t…
The apparent impossibility of extending non-relativistic quantum mechanics to a relativistic quantum theory is shown to be due to the insufficient structural richness of the field of complex numbers over which quantum mechanics is built. A…
Since its inception at the beginning of the twentieth century, quantum mechanics has challenged our conceptions of how the universe ought to work; however, the equations of quantum mechanics can be too computationally difficult to solve…
The program of reconstructing quantum theory based on information-theoretic principles enjoys much popularity in the foundations of physics. Surprisingly, this endeavor has only received very little attention in philosophy. Here I argue…
Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations - those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot. This is a departure from…
Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…
In this work, we present a logical formalism for reasoning about quantum systems in finite dimension. Contrary to the usual approach in quantum logic, our formalism is based classical first-order logic, which allows us to use the tools of…
The long lasting discussion on the completeness of quantum theory (QT) has not yet come to an end. The discussion is impeded by the lack of a clear understanding of what makes up the contents of a theory of physics in general and of QT…
We discuss how to reconstruct quantum theory from operational postulates. In particular, the following postulates are consistent only with for classical probability theory and quantum theory. Logical Sharpness: There is a one-to-one map…
Quantum Mechanics, almost 80 years after its arrival, is a well established and experimentally not falsified theory. It has predicted and explained a whole series of natural phenomena of a very delicate nature. But its interpretation has…
Quantum physics is a linear theory, so it is somewhat puzzling that it can underlie very complex systems such as digital computers and life. This paper investigates how this is possible. Physically, such complex systems are necessarily…
We explain the quantum structure as due to the presence of two effects, (a) a real change of state of the entity under influence of the measurement and, (b) a lack of knowledge about a deeper deterministic reality of the measurement…
In the last few years, theoretical study of quantum systems serving as computational devices has achieved tremendous progress. We now have strong theoretical evidence that quantum computers, if built, might be used as a dramatically…
Quantum theory's irreducible empirical core is a probability calculus. While it presupposes the events to which (and on the basis of which) it serves to assign probabilities, and therefore cannot account for their occurrence, it has to be…
Harnessing the potential computational advantage of quantum computers for machine learning tasks relies on the uploading of classical data onto quantum computers through what are commonly referred to as quantum encodings. The choice of such…
A formulation of quantum mechanics, which begins by postulating assertions for individual physical systems, is given. The statistical predictions of quantum mechanics for infinite ensembles are then derived from its assertions for…
A remarkable theorem by Clifton, Bub and Halvorson (2003)(CBH) characterizes quantum theory in terms of information--theoretic principles. According to Bub (2004, 2005) the philosophical significance of the theorem is that quantum theory…
We explore finite-field frameworks for quantum theory and quantum computation. The simplest theory, defined over unrestricted finite fields, is unnaturally strong. A second framework employs only finite fields with no solution to x^2+1=0,…
An intense effort is being made today to build a quantum computer. Instead of presenting what has been achieved, I invoke here analogies from the history of science in an attempt to glimpse what the future might hold. Quantum computing is…
Quantum and classical mechanics are derived using four natural physical principles: (1) the laws of nature are invariant under time evolution, (2) the laws of nature are invariant under tensor composition, (3) the laws of nature are…
Based on ideas of quantum theory of open systems we propose the consistent approach to the formulation of logic of plausible propositions. To this end we associate with every plausible proposition diagonal matrix of its likelihood and…