Related papers: Covariance and Frames of Reference
In physics, every observation is made with respect to a frame of reference. Although reference frames are usually not considered as degrees of freedom, in all practical situations it is a physical system which constitutes a reference frame.…
We postulate the applicability of the general form-invariance principle in special relativity. It is shown that this principle holds in classical mechanics. Some examples of transformations between the reference frames which satisfy this…
Reference frames are of special importance in physics. They are usually considered to be idealized entities. However, in most situations, e.g. in laboratories, physical processes are described within reference frames constituted by physical…
Physics is a model of nature able to both describe and predict the results of measurements made with respect to reference systems. These reference systems, in turn, are themselves physical and thus subject to the laws of physics. The…
Decoherence may not solve all of the measurement problems of quantum mechanics. It is proposed that a solution to these problems may be to allow that superpositions describe physically real systems in the following sense. Each quantum…
A covariant reformulation of General Relativity is briefly considered from three points of view: geometrodynamics, Lagrange-Euler field theory, and gauge field theory. From a geometrodynamics perspective, a definition of the reference frame…
Reference frames are used to parameterize measurements of physical effects, but since their practical realization uses material objects, they may affect observations performed in a combined quantum state of the measured system together with…
We consider the process of changing reference frames in the case where the reference frames are quantum systems. We find that, as part of this process, decoherence is necessarily induced on any quantum system described relative to these…
Treating reference frames fundamentally as quantum systems is inevitable in quantum gravity and also in quantum foundations once considering laboratories as physical systems. Both fields thereby face the question of how to describe physics…
The developments of special relativity and quantum mechanics marked the beginning of the modern physics age. The former has taught us that while space and time are frame dependent notions, there is a quantity -- the space-time interval --…
Galilean Relativity and Einstein's Special and General Relativity showed that the Laws of Physics go deeper than their representations in any given reference frame. Thus covariance, or independence of Laws of Physics with respect to changes…
A generalized definition of a frame of reference in spaces with affine connections and metrics is proposed based on the set of the following differential-geometric objects: (a) a non-null (non-isotropic) vector field, (b) the orthogonal to…
A quantum frame is defined by a material object subject to the laws of quantum mechanics. The present paper studies the relations between quantum frames, which in the classical case are described by elements of the Poincare' group. The…
We focus on three distinct lines of recent developments: edge modes and boundary charges in gravitational physics, relational dynamics in classical and quantum gravity, and quantum reference frames. We argue that these research directions…
In standard quantum mechanics, reference frames are treated as abstract entities. We can think of them as idealized, infinite-mass subsystems which decouple from the rest of the system. In nature, however, all reference frames are realized…
Symmetries are a central concept in our understanding of physics. In quantum theories, a quantum reference frame (QRF) can be used to distinguish between observables related by a symmetry. The framework of operational QRFs provides a means…
The question of general covariance in quantum gravity is considered in the first post-Newtonian approximation. Transformation properties of observable quantities under deformations of a reference frame, induced by variations of the gauge…
Quantum reference frames are needed in quantum theory for much the same reasons that reference frames are in classical theories: to manifest invariance in line with fundamental relativity principles and to provide a basis for the definition…
A general theory of frames of reference proposed in a preceding publication is considered here in the framework of the post-Newtonian approximation, assuming that the frame of reference is centered on a time-like geodesic. The problem of…
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…