Related papers: Interpretation of quantum theory: the quantum "gru…
Experimental evidene of the last decades has made the status of "collapses of the wave function" even more shaky than it already was on conceptual grounds: interference effects turn out to be detectable even when collapses are typically…
We pursue the view that quantum theory may be an emergent structure related to large space-time scales. In particular, we consider classical Hamiltonian systems in which the intrinsic proper time evolution parameter is related through a…
In a series of papers, a many-minds interpretation of quantum theory has been developed. The aim in these papers is to present an explicit mathematical formalism which constitutes a complete theory compatible with relativistic quantum field…
Recently, apparent nonphysical implications of non-Hermitian quantum mechanics (NHQM) have been discussed in the literature. In particular, the apparent violation of the no-signaling theorem, discrimination of nonorthogonal states, and the…
A number of phenomena generally believed characteristic of quantum mechanics and seen as interpretively problematic--the incompatibility and value-indeterminacy of variables, the non-existence of dispersion-free states, the failure of the…
The question of how irreversibility can emerge as a generic phenomena when the underlying mechanical theory is reversible has been a long-standing fundamental problem for both classical and quantum mechanics. We describe a mechanism for the…
Usual quantum mechanics requires a fixed, background, spacetime geometry and its associated causal structure. A generalization of the usual theory may therefore be needed at the Planck scale for quantum theories of gravity in which…
There are fundamental reasons as to why there should exist a reformulation of quantum mechanics which does not refer to a classical spacetime manifold. It follows as a consequence that quantum mechanics as we know it is a limiting case of a…
We put forward a possible new interpretation and explanatory framework for quantum theory. The basic hypothesis underlying this new framework is that quantum particles are conceptual entities. More concretely, we propose that quantum…
Incompatibility between conjugate variables and complementary pictures comes in two kinds, exclusive of one another. The first kind is unconditional, and the second conditional on quantum's indivisibility. We employ this distinction to…
Bringing gravity into a quantum-mechanical framework is likely the most profound remaining problem in fundamental physics. The "unitarity crisis" for black hole evolution appears to be a key facet of this problem, whose resolution will…
I list several strong requirements for what I would consider a sensible interpretation of quantum mechanics and I discuss two simple theorems. One, as far as I know, is new; the other was only noted a few years ago. Both have important…
I propose a new class of interpretations, {\it real world interpretations}, of the quantum theory of closed systems. These interpretations postulate a preferred factorization of Hilbert space and preferred projective measurements on one…
Quantum mechanics has maintained over the years the reputation of being "the most obscure theory." It works perfectly well, but nobody seems to know why. It has been argued that the difficulty in understanding quantum theory is our failed…
Here I explore a novel no-collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics which combines aspects of two familiar and well-developed alternatives, Bohmian mechanics and the many-worlds interpretation. Despite reproducing the empirical…
Recently, it has been argued that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, and that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumptions that quantum mechanics is correct and that…
This article aims to explain some of the basic facts about the questions raised in the title, without the technical details that are available in the literature. We provide a gentle introduction to some rather classical results about…
Quantum mechanics in its presently known formulation requires an external classical time for its description. A classical spacetime manifold and a classical spacetime metric are produced by classical matter fields. In the absence of such…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
Any canonical quantum theory can be understood to arise from the compatibility of the statistical geometry of distinguishable observations with the canonical Poisson structure of Hamiltonian dynamics. This geometric perspective offers a…