Related papers: Ambiguity, Invisibility, and Negativity
This paper introduces a qualitative measure of ambiguity and analyses its relationship with other measures of uncertainty. Probability measures relative likelihoods, while ambiguity measures vagueness surrounding those judgments. Ambiguity…
Among all entanglement measures negativity arguably is the best known and most popular tool to quantify bipartite quantum correlations. It is easily computed for arbitrary states of a composite system and can therefore be applied to discuss…
All attempts to quantize gravity face several difficult problems. Among these problems are: (i) metric positivity (positivity of the spatial distance between distinct points), (ii) the presence of anomalies (partial second-class nature of…
Pivotal within quantum physics, the concept of quantum incompatibility is generally related to algebraic aspects of the formalism, such as commutation relations and unbiasedness of bases. Recently, the concept was identified as a resource…
The concept of complexity appears in virtually all areas of knowledge. Its intuitive meaning shares similarities across fields, but disagreements between its details hinders a general definition, leading to a plethora of proposed…
A system's apparent simplicity depends on whether it is represented classically or quantally. This is not so surprising, as classical and quantum physics are descriptive frameworks built on different assumptions that capture, emphasize, and…
We provide a reinterpretation of the quantum vacuum ambiguities that one encounters when studying particle creation phenomena due to an external and time-dependent agent. We propose a measurement-motivated understanding: Each way of…
This paper considers the relevance of the concepts of observability and computability in physical theory. Observability is related to verifiability which is essential for effective computing and as physical systems are computational systems…
A variety of physical unknowables are discussed. Provable lack of physical omniscience, omnipredictability and omnipotence is derived by reduction to problems which are known to be recursively unsolvable. "Chaotic" symbolic dynamical…
Mathematical reasoning skills are a desired outcome of many introductory physics courses, particularly calculus-based physics courses. Positive and negative quantities are ubiquitous in physics, and the sign carries important and varied…
There are many examples in the literature that suggest that indistinguishability is intransitive, despite the fact that the indistinguishability relation is typically taken to be an equivalence relation (and thus transitive). It is shown…
The concept of {\em complexity} (as a quantity) has been plagued by numerous contradictory and confusing definitions. By explicitly recognising a role for the observer of a system, an observer that attaches meaning to data about the system,…
The question of quantifying the sharpness (or unsharpness) of a quantum mechanical effect is investigated. Apart from sharpness, another property, bias, is found to be relevant for the joint measurability or coexistence of two effects.…
The fundamental physical theories that interpret and explain behaviour of matter in nature are dependent on several unobservables and insensibles in their construction. While a rigorous natural philosophy cannot take them for granted, there…
In Quantum Physics there are circumstances where the direct measurement of particular observables encounters diffculties; in some of these cases, however, its value can be evaluated, i.e. it can be inferred by measuring another observable…
Irreversibility is often considered to characterize measurements in quantum mechanics. Fundamental problems with this characterization are addressed. First, whether a measurement is made in quantum mechanics is an arbitrary decision on the…
The term "measurement" in quantum theory (as well as in other physical theories) is ambiguous: It is used to describe both an experience - e.g., an observation in an experiment - and an interaction with the system under scrutiny. If doing…
Quantum uncertainty is described here in two guises: indeterminacy with its concomitant indeterminism of measurement outcomes, and fuzziness, or unsharpness. Both features were long seen as obstructions of experimental possibilities that…
The paper reviews and discusses four ideas scattered in previous papers of the author. First, objective properties of quantum systems are not associated with observables but are defined by preparations. Second, measurable results of…
Precise definitions of "weak [quantum] measurements" and "weak value" [of a quantum observable] are offered, which seem to capture the meaning of the often vague ways that these terms are used in the literature. Simple finite dimensional…