Related papers: Quantum Mechanical Reality: Entanglement and Decoh…
What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…
We will argue that a phenomenological analysis of consciousness, similar to that of Husserl, shows that the effects of phenomenal qualities shape our perception of the world. It also shows the way the physical and mathematical sciences…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
The quantum theory of decoherence plays an important role in a pragmatist interpretation of quantum theory. It governs the descriptive content of claims about values of physical magnitudes and offers advice on when to use quantum…
Using tangent bundle geometry we construct an equivalent reformulation of classical field theory on flat spacetimes which simultaneously encodes the perspectives of multiple observers. Its generalization to curved spacetimes realizes a new…
One interpretation of how the classical world emerges from an underlying quantum reality involves the build-up of certain robust entanglements between particles due to scattering events [Science Vol.301 p.1081]. This is an appealing view…
Quantum mechanics is nonlocal. Classical mechanics is local. Consequently classical mechanics can not explain all quantum phenomena. Conversely, it is cumbersome to use quantum mechanics to describe classical phenomena. Not only are the…
The quantum description of the microscopic world is incompatible with the classical description of the macroscopic world, both mathematically and conceptually. Nevertheless, it is generally accepted that classical mechanics emerges from…
It is commonly believed that decoherence arises as a result of the entangling interaction between a quantum system and its environment, as a consequence of which the environment effectively measures the system, thus washing away its quantum…
These notes review a description of quantum mechanics in terms of the topology of spaces, basing on the axioms of Topological Quantum Field Theory and path integral formalism. In this description quantum states and operators are encoded by…
Theories of decoherence come in two flavors---Platonic and Aristotelian. Platonists grant ontological primacy to the concepts and mathematical symbols by which we describe or comprehend the physical world. Aristotelians grant it to the…
This paper presents an alternative approach to quantum entanglement, one that effectively resolves the logical inconsistencies without leading to logical contradictions. By addressing some of the inconsistencies within quantum mechanics,…
We attempt to contribute some novel points of view to the "foundations of quantum mechanics", using mathematical tools from "quantum probability theory" (such as the theory of operator algebras). We first introduce an abstract algebraic…
Assuming the validity of the equivalence principle in the quantum regime, we argue that one of the assumptions of the usual definition of quantum mechanics, namely separation between the ``classical'' detector and the ``quantum'' system,…
The theories of quantum mechanics and relativity dramatically altered our understanding of the universe ushering in the era of modern physics. Quantum theory deals with objects probabilistically at small scales, whereas relativity deals…
Theory of quantum measurements is often classified as decision theory. An event in decision theory corresponds to the measurement of an observable. This analogy looks clear for operationally testable simple events. However, the situation is…
Quantum theory does not only predict probabilities, but also relative phases for any experiment, that involves measurements of an ensemble of systems at different moments of time. We argue, that any operational formulation of quantum theory…
Physical interpretations of the time-symmetric formulation of quantum mechanics, due to Aharonov, Bergmann, and Lebowitz are discussed in terms of weak values. The most direct, yet somewhat naive, interpretation uses the time-symmetric…
The mechanism of the transition of a dynamical system from quantum to classical mechanics is one of the remaining challenges of quantum theory. Currently, it is considered to occur via decoherence caused by entanglement and/or stochastic…
The relational interpretation (or RQM, for Relational Quantum Mechanics) solves the measurement problem by considering an ontology of sparse relative events, or "facts". Facts are realized in interactions between any two physical systems…