Related papers: Quantum Universe and its Elusive Classicality
The implications of the physical theory of quantum mechanics on the question of realism is much a subject of sustaining interest, while the background questions among physicists on how to think about all the theoretical notion and…
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…
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…
An analysis of quantum measurement is presented that relies on an information-theoretic description of quantum entanglement. In a consistent quantum information theory of entanglement, entropies (uncertainties) conditional on measurement…
A persistent focus on the concept of emergence as a core element of the scientific method allows a clean separation, insofar as this is possible, of the physical and philosophical aspects of the problem of outcomes in quantum mechanics. The…
At the primary level of reality as described by quantum field theory, a fundamental particle like an electron represents a stable, discrete, propagating excited state of its underlying quantum field. QFT also tells us that the lowest vacuum…
In this paper Quantum Mechanics with Fundamental Length is chosen as the theory for describing the early Universe. This is possible due to the presence in the theory of General Uncertainty Relations from which unavoidable it follows that in…
Scientific realism in classical (i.e. pre-quantum) physics has remained compatible with the naive realism of everyday thinking on the whole; whereas it has proven impossible to find any consistent way to visualize the world underlying…
Decoherence and einselection have been effective in explaining several features of an emergent classical world from an underlying quantum theory. However, the theory assumes a particular factorization of the global Hilbert space into…
A direct classical analog of quantum decoherence is introduced. Similarities and differences between decoherence dynamics examined quantum mechanically and classically are exposed via a second-order perturbative treatment and via a strong…
We take our world to be an objective reality, but is it? The assumption that the physical world exists in and of itself has struggled to assimilate the findings of modern physics for some time now. For example, an objective space and time…
Indistinguishability of particles is normally considered to be an inherently quantum property which cannot be possessed by a classical theory. However, Saunders has argued that this is incorrect, and that classically indistinguishable…
A characteristical property of a classical physical theory is that the observables are real functions taking an exact outcome on every (pure) state; in a quantum theory, at the contrary, a given observable on a given state can take several…
In June 1925 Heisenberg arrived at Helgoland/Heligoland island to escape a fit of hay fever. He returned with a sketch of a strange theory of the micro-world, which we now call quantum mechanics. This essay attempts to present a look at…
The coherent superposition of states, in combination with the quantization of observables, represents one of the most fundamental features that mark the departure of quantum mechanics from the classical realm. Quantum coherence in many-body…
Quantum decoherence arises due to uncontrollable entanglement between a system with its environment. However the effects of decoherence are often thought of and modeled through a simpler picture in which the role of the environment is to…
The Hilbert space formalism describes causality as a statistical relation between initial experimental conditions and final measurement outcomes, expressed by the inner products of state vectors representing these conditions. This…
The identification of physical subsystems in quantum mechanics as compared to classical mechanics poses significant conceptual challenges, especially in the context of quantum gravity. Traditional approaches associate quantum systems with…
We argue that the many-worlds of quantum mechanics and the many worlds of the multiverse are the same thing, and that the multiverse is necessary to give exact operational meaning to probabilistic predictions from quantum mechanics.…
The possibility of a quantum system to exhibit properties that are akin to both the classically held notions of being a particle and a wave, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the quantum description of nature. These aspects have been…