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Related papers: The original Wigner's-Friend scenarios

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We develop a new interpretation of quantum theory by combining insights from extended Wigner's friend scenarios and quantum causal modelling. In this interpretation, which synthesizes ideas from relational quantum mechanics and consistent…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2024-02-01 Nick Ormrod , Jonathan Barrett

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…

The friendship paradox -- the observation that, on average, one's friends have more friends than oneself -- admits two common formulations depending on whether averaging is performed over edges or over nodes. These two definitions, the…

Physics and Society · Physics 2026-04-22 Sang Hoon Lee

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

The Frauchiger--Renner paradox derives an inconsistency when quantum theory is used to describe the use of itself, by means of a scenario where agents model other agents quantumly and reason about each other's knowledge. We observe that…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-27 Laurens Walleghem , Rui Soares Barbosa , Matthew F. Pusey , Stefan Weigert

In 1962, Eugene P. Wigner introduced a thought experiment that highlighted the incompatibility in quantum theory between unitary evolution and wave function reduction in a measurement. This work resulted in a class of thought experiments…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-05-19 Vinicius P. Rossi , Diogo O. Soares-Pinto

The concept of an isolated system, and Frauchiger and Renner's extended `Wigner's friend' scenario are discussed. It is argued that: (i) it is questionable whether the approximation of the isolated system is valid when measurement-like…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-05-12 Andrew Steane

The Wigner's friend thought experiment has gained a resurgence of interest in recent years thanks to no-go theorems that extend it to Bell-like scenarios. One of these, by us and co-workers, showcased the contradiction that arises between…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-05-17 Aníbal Utreras-Alarcón , Eric G. Cavalcanti , Howard M. Wiseman

Wigner's friend paradoxes highlight contradictions between measurements made by Friends inside a laboratory and superobservers outside a laboratory, who have access to an entangled state of the measurement apparatus. The contradictions lead…

The measurement problem is seen as an ambiguity of quantum mechanics, or, beyond that, as a contradiction within the theory: Quantum mechanics offers two conflicting descriptions of the Wigner's-friend experiment. As we argue in this note…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-12-09 Arne Hansen , Stefan Wolf

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

The Wigner's friend type of thought experiments manifest the conceptual challenge on how different observers can have consistent descriptions of a quantum measurement event. In this paper, we analyze the extended version of Wigner's friend…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2019-11-12 Jianhao M. Yang

The Wigner's Friend (WF) thought experiment concerns quantum measurements by a 'superobserver' of an observer measuring a quantum system. Variations on the setup and its extended versions have seen a resurgence in recent years, in light of…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-07-30 Tom Rivlin , Sophie Engineer , Veronika Baumann

Wigner's Friend-type paradoxes challenge the assumption that events are absolute -- that when we measure a system, we obtain a single result, which is not relative to anything or anyone else. These paradoxes highlight the tension between…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2026-04-23 Sumit Mukherjee , Jonte R. Hance

"The unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomena must, in principle, include a description of all relevant features of experimental arrangement" (Bohr). The measurement process is composed of pre-measurement (quantum correlation of the…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-04-12 Marek Żukowski , Marcin Markiewicz

I show how the quantum paradoxes occurring when we adopt a standard realist framework (or a framework in which the collapse implies a physical change of the state of the system) vanish if we abandon the idea that a measurement is related…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-09 Hervé Zwirn

An experiment by Proietti {\it et al} purporting to instantiate the `Wigner's Friend' thought experiment is discussed. It is pointed out that the stated implications of the experiment regarding the alleged irreconcilability of facts…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2023-03-30 R. E. Kastner

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 notorious Wigner's friend thought experiment (and modifications thereof) has in recent years received renewed interest especially due to new arguments that force us to question some of the fundamental assumptions of quantum theory. In…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-05-18 Philippe Allard Guérin , Veronika Baumann , Flavio Del Santo , Časlav Brukner

This article suggests that thinking about the role of reference frames can provide new insight into Extended Wigner's Friend scenarios. This involves appealing to symmetries to make a principled distinction between properties of a system…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2025-12-09 Emily Adlam