Related papers: Observable and Unobservable in Quantum Mechanics
The paper proves that quantum mechanics is compatible with the constructive realism of modern philosophy of science. The proof is based on the observation that properties of quantum systems that are uniquely determined by their preparations…
The notion of "closed systems" in Quantum Mechanics is discussed. For this purpose, we study two models of a quantum-mechanical system $P$ spatially far separated from the "rest of the universe" $Q$. Under reasonable assumptions on the…
According to our current conception of physics, any valid physical theory is supposed to describe the objective evolution of a unique external world. However, this condition is challenged by quantum theory, which suggests that physical…
The quantum state \psi is a mathematical object used to determine the probabilities of different outcomes when measuring a physical system. Its fundamental nature has been the subject of discussions since the inception of quantum theory: is…
Quantum mechanics is an extremely successful theory of nature and yet it lacks an intuitive axiomatization. In contrast, the special theory of relativity is well understood and is rooted into natural or experimentally justified postulates.…
A type of mechanics will be presented that possesses some distinctive properties. On the one hand, its physical description & rules of operation are readily comprehensible & intuitively clear. On the other, it fully satisfies all observable…
The ontological aspect of Bohmian mechanics, as a hidden-variable theory that provides us with an objective description of a quantum world without observers, is widely known. Yet its practicality is getting more and more acceptance and…
Historically, the element of uncertainty in quantum mechanics has been expressed through mathematical identities called uncertainty relations, a great many of which continue to be discovered. These relations use diverse measures to quantify…
As repeatedly emphasized by Einstein our knowledge of the structure of space and time is based entirely on inferences from observations of physical objects and processes. At the most fundamental level these objects and processes are…
The three major theoretical principles of quantum mechanics relevant to its interpretation are: (T1), linearity; (T2), invariance under certain groups; and (T3) the orthogonality and isolation of the different branches of the state vector.…
We add non-linear and state-dependent terms to quantum field theory. We show that the resulting low-energy theory, non-linear quantum mechanics, is causal, preserves probability and permits a consistent description of the process of…
Many quantization schemes rely on analogs of classical mechanics where the connections with classical mechanics are indirect. In this work I propose a new and direct connection between classical mechanics and quantum mechanics where the…
The conventional postulate for the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics is asymmetric in preparation and measurement, making retrodiction reliant on inference by use of Bayes' theorem. Here, a more fundamental symmetric…
Zurek's existential interpretation of quantum mechanics suffers from three classical prejudices, including the belief that space and time are intrinsically and infinitely differentiated. They compel him to relativize the concept of…
This document is meant as a pedagogical introduction to the modern language used to talk about quantum theory, especially in the field of quantum information. It assumes that the reader has taken a first traditional course on quantum…
Whenever a mathematical proposition to be proved requires more information than it is contained in an axiomatic system, it can neither be proved nor disproved, i.e. it is undecidable, or logically undetermined, within this axiomatic system.…
Quantum mechanics is usually presented starting from a series of postulates about the mathematical framework. In this work we show that those same postulates can be derived by assuming that measurements are discrete interactions: that is,…
The familiar concepts of state vectors and operators in quantum mechanics rely on associative products of observables. However, these notions do not apply to some exotic systems such as magnetic monopoles, which have long been known to lead…
The fundamental algebraic concepts of quantum mechanics, as expressed by many authors, are reviewed and translated into the framework of the relatively new non-distributive system of Boolean fractions (also called conditional events or…
Due to the existence of incompatible observables, the propositional calculus of a quantum system does not form a Boolean algebra but an orthomodular lattice. Such lattice can be realised as a lattice of subspaces on a real, complex or…