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Sphere packings are essential to the development of physical models for powders, composite materials, and the atomic structure of the liquid state. There is a strong scientific need to be able to assess the fit of packing models to data,…
Conventional scattering theory is incomplete in that it does not adequately describe the behaviour of the wave function at macroscopic distances from the scattering reaction volume. In scattering experiments particles are incident from…
Quantum theory is a tremendously successful physical theory, but nevertheless suffers from two serious problems: the measurement problem and the problem of interpretational underdetermination. The latter, however, is largely overlooked as a…
It is argued that the traditional "realist" methodology of physics, according to which human concepts, laws and theories can grasp the essence of reality, is incompatible with the most fruitful interpretation of quantum formalism. The proof…
The issue of non-perturbative background independent quantization of matrix models is addressed. The analysis is carried out by considering a simple matrix model which is a matrix extension of ordinary mechanics reduced to 0 dimension. It…
Quantum theory can be viewed as a generalization of classical probability theory, but the analogy as it has been developed so far is not complete. Whereas the manner in which inferences are made in classical probability theory is…
Any complete theory of physical reality must allow for the ubiquitous phenomenon of subjective experience at some level, or risk being conceptually incoherent. However, as long as the ontological status of subjectivity itself remains…
Nuclear effective field theory organizes the calculation of observables as a power series in terms of the ratio of soft and hard momentum scales. The rigorous implementation of this idea requires a mixture of perturbative and…
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 cosmology has traditionally been studied at the level of symmetry-reduced minisuperspace models, analyzing the behavior of wave functions. However, in the absence of a complete full setting of quantum gravity and detailed knowledge…
The act of describing how a physical process changes a system is the basis for understanding observed phenomena. For quantum-mechanical processes in particular, the affect of processes on quantum states profoundly advances our knowledge of…
The Standard Model of the electroweak and strong interactions of particle physics is a quantum field theory. Elementary particles are not indivisible `pieces' of matter but energy bundles of fields, whose properties and interactions are a…
The mathematical formalism necessary for the diagramatic evaluation of quantum corrections to a conformally invariant field theory for a self-interacting scalar field on a curved manifold with boundary is considered. The evaluation of…
The existence of incompatibility is one of the most fundamental features of quantum theory, and can be found at the core of many of the theory's distinguishing features, such as Bell inequality violations and the no-broadcasting theorem. A…
We introduce a new way of quantifying the degrees of incompatibility of two ob- servables in a probabilistic physical theory and, based on this, a global measure of the degree of incompatibility inherent in such theories, across all…
This thesis addresses the problem of developing a quantum counter-part of the well established classical theory of control. We dwell on the fundamental fact that quantum states are generally not perfectly distinguishable, and quantum…
In recent years, criticism of the methodology of particle physics beyond the Standard Model has increased, diagnosing too much reliance on aesthetic criteria for theory development and evaluation. Faced with several decades of experimental…
Despite the unparalleled accuracy of quantum-theoretical predictions across an enormous range of phenomena, the theory's foundations are still in doubt. The theory deviates radically from classical physics, predicts counterintuitive…
It is argued that the conventional formulation of quantum mechanics is inadequate: the usual interpretation of the mathematical formalism in terms of the results of measurements cannot be applied to situations in which discontinuous…
The measurement problem and the role of observers have plagued quantum mechanics since its conception. Attempts to resolve these have introduced anthropomorphic or non-realist notions into physics. A shift of perspective based upon process…