Related papers: Wavefunction branching: when you can't tell pure s…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
In many physical situations involving diverse length scales, waves or rays representing them travel through media characterized by spatially smooth, random, modest refactive index variations. "Primary" diffraction (by individual…
We investigate an original family of quantum distinguishability problems, where the goal is to perfectly distinguish between $M$ quantum states that become identical under a completely decohering map. Similarly, we study distinguishability…
The quasiparticle wavefunction of a many-electron system is traditionally defined as the eigenfunction of the quasiparticle eigenvalue equation involving the self-energy. In this article a new concept of a quasiparticle wavefunction is…
The question of whether entanglement between photons is equivalent to entanglement between their characteristic field modes, specifically, the single-particle wavefunctions that are composed and superposed to describe particles in such…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might be split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
In quantum cosmological models, constructed in the framework of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metrics, a nucleation of the Universe with its further expansion is described as a tunneling transition through an effective barrier between regions…
Wavefunction collapse is usually seen as a discontinuous violation of the unitary evolution of a quantum system, caused by the observation. Moreover, the collapse appears to be nonlocal in a sense which seems at odds with General…
It is commonly stated that decoherence in open quantum systems is due to growing entanglement with an environment. In practice, however, surprisingly often decoherence may equally well be described by random unitary dynamics without…
We assume that particles are point-like objects even when not observed. We report on the consequences of our assumption within the realm of quantum theory. An important consequence is the necessity of vacuum fields to account for particle…
Set theory brought revolution to philosophy of mathematics and it can bring revolution to philosophy of physics too. All that stands in the way is the intuition that sets of physical objects cannot themselves be physical objects, which…
As the possibility to decouple temporal and spatial variations of the electromagnetic field, leading to a wavelength stretching, has been recognized to be of paramount importance for practical applications, we generalize the idea of…
The concept of entanglement splitting is introduced by asking whether it is possible for a party possessing half of a pure bipartite quantum state to transfer some of his entanglement with the other party to a third party. We describe the…
Two essential shortcomings of the axiomatics of wave mechanics are revealed, which make its consistent interpretation impossible. The first is that the standard formulation of the superposition principle contradicts the exact solutions of…
An intrinsic measure of the quality of a variational wave function is given by its overlap with the ground state of the system. We derive a general formula to compute this overlap when quantum dynamics in imaginary time is accessible. The…
In classical theory, the physical systems are elucidated through the concepts of particles and waves, which aim to describe the reality of the physical system with certainty. In this framework, particles are mathematically represented by…
A phase space formulation of the filtering process upon an incident quantum state is developed. This formulation can explain the results of both quantum interference and delayed-choice experiments without making use of the controversial…
In quantum mechanics, the wavefunction predicts probabilities of possible measurement outcomes, but not which individual outcome is realised in each run of an experiment. This suggests that it describes an ensemble of states with different…
A defence is offered of a version of the branch-counting rule for probability in the Everett interpretation (otherwise known as many-worlds interpretation) of quantum mechanics that both depends on the state and is continuous in the norm…
In Everettian quantum mechanics, justifications for the Born rule appeal to self-locating uncertainty or decision theory. Such justifications have focused exclusively on a pure-state Everettian multiverse, represented by a wave function.…