Related papers: The Role of the Future in Quantum Theory
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
What is the quantum state of the universe? That is the central question of quantum cosmology. This essay describes the place of that quantum state in a final theory governing the regularities exhibited universally by all physical systems in…
We suggest solving the measurement problem by postulating the existence of a special future final boundary condition for the universe. Although this is an extension of the way boundary conditions are usually chosen (in terrestrial…
In any given experimental scenario, the rules of quantum theory provide statistical distributions that the observed outcomes are expected to follow. The set formed by all these distributions contains the imprint of quantum theory, capturing…
We suggest an interpretation of quantum mechanics, inspired by the ideas of Aharonov et al. of a time-symmetric description of quantum theory. We show that a special final boundary condition for the Universe, may be consistently defined as…
A reformulation of a physical theory in which measurements at the initial and final moments of time are treated independently is discussed, both on the classical and quantum levels. Methods of the standard quantum mechanics are used to…
Quantum theory provides an extremely accurate description of fundamental processes in physics. It thus seems likely that the theory is applicable beyond the, mostly microscopic, domain in which it has been tested experimentally. Here we…
Quantum theory encounters a difficulty when attempting to describe recording devices. If the recording is of events in which quantum uncertainty plays a role, such as an experiment on a quantum system, quantum theory is unable to correctly…
The only evidence we have for a discrete reality comes from quantum measurements; without invoking these measurements, quantum theory describes continuous entities. This seeming contradiction can be resolved via analysis that treats…
Traditional interpretations of quantum theory in terms of wave function collapse are particularly unappealing when considering the universe as a whole, where there is no clean separation between classical observer and quantum system and…
A quantum theory of the universe consists of a theory of its quantum dynamics and a theory of its quantum state The theory predicts quantum multiverses in the form of decoherent sets of alternative histories describing the evolution of the…
General relativity allows a variety of future singularities to occur in the evolution of the universe. At these future singularities, the universe will end in a singular state after a finite proper time and geometrical invariants of the…
An effective formalism for quantum constrained systems is presented which allows manageable derivations of solutions and observables, including a treatment of physical reality conditions without requiring full knowledge of the physical…
I offer an account of how the quantum theory we have helps us explain so much. The account depends on a pragmatist interpretation of the theory: This takes a quantum state to serve solely as a source of sound advice to physically situated…
Applications of quantum mechanics have led to many successful predictions and explanations of puzzling phenomena, and we now apply quantum mechanics to gain, process, and communicate information in novel ways. We can understand quantum…
We stress the notion of statistical experiment, which is mandatory for quantum mechanics, and recall Ludwig's foundation of quantum mechanics, which provides the most general framework to deal with statistical experiments giving evidence…
According to quantum mechanics, statements about the future made by sentient beings like us are, in general, neither true nor false; they must satisfy a many-valued logic. I propose that the truth value of such a statement should be…
A number of issues related to measurement show that self-consistency is lacking in quantum mechanics as this theory has been generally understood. Each issue is presented as a point in this paper. Each point can be resolved by incorporating…
It is first pointed out that there is a common mathematical model for the universe and the quantum computer. The former is called the histories approach to quantum mechanics and the latter is called measurement based quantum computation.…
What is the quantum state of the universe? Although there have been several interesting suggestions, the question remains open. In this paper, I consider a natural choice for the universal quantum state arising from the Past Hypothesis, a…