Related papers: Quantum Theory From Five Reasonable Axioms
We show that quantum theory (QT) is a substructure of classical probabilistic physics. The central quantity of the classical theory is Hamilton's function, which determines canonical equations, a corresponding flow, and a Liouville equation…
The relationship between classical and quantum theory is of central importance to the philosophy of physics, and any interpretation of quantum mechanics has to clarify it. Our discussion of this relationship is partly historical and…
Some mathematical theories in physics justify their explanatory superiority over earlier formalisms by the clarity of their postulates. In particular, axiomatic reconstructions drive home the importance of the composition rule and the…
We consider the problem of gambling on a quantum experiment and enforce rational behaviour by a few rules. These rules yield, in the classical case, the Bayesian theory of probability via duality theorems. In our quantum setting, they yield…
Emergence of the classical world from the quantum substrate of our Universe is a long-standing conundrum. I describe three insights into the transition from quantum to classical that are based on the recognition of the role of the…
General relativity is a background-independent theory of a dynamical classical spacetime geometry. Quantum theory is formulated in a classical spacetime, as an intrinsically probabilistic, contextual theory of non-classical, interfering…
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…
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…
We provide a mechanism by which, from a background independent model with no quantum mechanics, quantum theory arises in the same limit in which spatial properties appear. Starting with an arbitrary abstract graph as the microscopic model…
There has been a body of works deriving the complex Hilbert space structure of quantum theory from axioms/principles/postulates to deepen our understanding about quantum theory and to reveal ways to go beyond it to resolve foundational…
Quantum theory predicts probabilities as well as relative phases between different alternatives of the system. A unified description of both probabilities and phases comes through a generalisation of the notion of a density matrix for…
Bohmian mechanics represents the universe as a set of paths with a probability measure defined on it. The way in which a mathematical model of this kind can explain the observed phenomena of the universe is examined in general. It is shown…
The rather unintuitive nature of quantum theory has led numerous people to develop sets of (physically motivated) principles that can be used to derive quantum mechanics from the ground up, in order to better understand where the structure…
Quantum decision theory is introduced here, and new basis for this theory is proposed. It is first based upon the author's general arguments for the Hilbert space formalism in quantum theory, next on arguments for the Born rule, that is,…
It is shown how the essentials of quantum theory, i.e., the Schroedinger equation and the Heisenberg uncertainty relations, can be derived from classical physics. Next to the empirically grounded quantisation of energy and momentum, the…
This paper reports three almost trivial theorems that nevertheless appear to have significant import for quantum foundations studies. 1) A Gleason-like derivation of the quantum probability law, but based on the positive operator-valued…
Five physical assumptions are proposed that together entail the general qualitative results, including the Born rule, of non-relativistic quantum mechanics by physical and information-theoretic reasoning alone. Two of these assumptions…
Quantum theory is formulated as the uniquely consistent way to manipulate probability amplitudes. The crucial ingredient is a consistency constraint: if the amplitude of a quantum process can be computed in two different ways, the two…
Quantum theory demands that, in contrast to classical physics, not all properties can be simultaneously well defined. The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is a manifestation of this fact. Another important corollary arises that there can be…
The list of basic axioms of quantum mechanics as it was formulated by von Neumann includes only the mathematical formalism of the Hilbert space and its statistical interpretation. We point out that such an approach is too general to be…