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Quantum theory in its conventional formulation is notoriously subject to various measurement-related paradoxes, as exemplified by the "Schrodinger's Cat" and "Wigner's Friend" thought experiments. It has been shown, for example by…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-10-04 R. E. Kastner

Extended Wigner's friend no-go theorems provide a modern lens for investigating the measurement problem, by making precise the challenges that arise when one attempts to model agents as dynamical quantum systems. Most such no-go theorems…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-11-18 Laurens Walleghem , Rafael Wagner , Yìlè Yīng , David Schmid

It is commonly expected that quantum theory is universal, in that it describes the world at all scales. Yet, quantum effects at the macroscopic scale continue to elude our experimental observation. This fact is commonly attributed to…

According to QBism, quantum states, unitary evolutions, and measurement operators are all understood as personal judgments of the agent using the formalism. Meanwhile, quantum measurement outcomes are understood as the personal experiences…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-10-19 John B. DeBrota , Christopher A. Fuchs , Ruediger Schack

What is fundamentally quantum? We argue that most of the features, problems, and paradoxes -- such as the measurement problem, the Wigner's friend paradox and its proposed solutions, single particle nonlocality, and no-cloning -- allegedly…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-04-09 Flavio Del Santo , Nicolas Gisin

The paradox of Wigner's friend challenges the objectivity of description in quantum theory. A pragmatist interpretation can meet this challenge by judicious appeal to decoherence. On this interpretation, quantum theory provides situated…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-06-22 Richard Healey

The firewall paradox, a puzzle in black hole physics, depends on an implicit assumption: a rule that allows the infalling and the outside observer to combine their perspectives. However, a recent extension of the Wigner's friend paradox…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-04-08 Ladina Hausmann , Renato Renner

Extended Wigner's Friend Scenarios (EWFSs) go beyond the standard usage of quantum theory, where agents are treated classically, and instead model agents as unitary evolving quantum systems. This has been the subject of several no-go…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-11-12 V. Vilasini , Mischa P. Woods

In his famous thought experiment, Wigner assigns an entangled state to the composite quantum system made up of Wigner's friend and her observed system. While the two of them have different accounts of the process, each Wigner and his friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-06-05 Caslav Brukner

"Wigner's friend" refers to a quantum process of which different observers, following the rules of quantum mechanics, give contradictory descriptions. Lostaglio and Bowles have recently claimed to describe a classical system showing the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2022-01-12 Anthony Sudbery

The quantum measurement problem can be regarded as the tension between the two alternative dynamics prescribed by quantum mechanics: the unitary evolution of the wave function and the state-update rule (or "collapse") at the instant a…

It is commonly thought that observers in distinct branches of an Everettian multiverse cannot communicate without violating the linearity of quantum theory. Here we show a counterexample, demonstrating that inter-branch communication is in…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-28 Maria Violaris

The place and role of an Observer in quantum mechanics has been a subject of an ongoing debate since the theory's inception. Wigner brought this question to the fore in a celebrated scenario in which a super-Observer observes a Friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-09-14 A. Matzkin , D. Sokolovski

Wigner's friend experiment and its modern extensions display the ambiguity of the quantum mechanical description regarding the assignment of quantum states. While the friend applies the state-update rule to the system upon observing an…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-10-22 Flavio Del Santo , Gonzalo Manzano , Caslav Brukner

Wigner-friend scenarios -- in which external agents describe a closed laboratory containing a friend making a measurement -- highlight the difficulties inherent to quantum theory when accounting for measurements. In non-relativistic…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-09-13 J. Allam , A. Matzkin

Proietti et al. (arXiv:1902.05080) reported on an experiment designed to settle, or at least to throw light upon, the paradox of Wigner's friend. Without questioning the rigor or ingenuity of the experimental protocol, I argue that its…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-10-29 Louis Marchildon

We discuss the no-go theorem of Frauchiger and Renner based on an "extended Wigner's friend" thought experiment which is supposed to show that any single-world interpretation of quantum mechanics leads to inconsistent predictions if it is…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2018-11-14 Dustin Lazarovici , Mario Hubert

Wigner's thought experiment illustrates quantum theory's measurement problem by considering an observer who measures a quantum system inside a sealed lab, modeled unitarily by an outsider. Recent extensions of this thought experiment,…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-15 Laurens Walleghem

A recent paper by two of us and co-workers, based on an extended Wigner's friend scenario, demonstrated that certain empirical correlations predicted by quantum theory (QT) violate inequalities derived from a set of metaphysical assumptions…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-09-20 Howard M. Wiseman , Eric G. Cavalcanti , Eleanor G. Rieffel

At the heart of both black hole physics and Wigner's friend scenarios lies the question of unitarity. In Wigner's friend setups, sealed-lab measurements are modeled unitarily, probing the measurement problem. In black hole physics, the…

General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology · Physics 2026-02-23 Laurens Walleghem