Related papers: The Plight of `I Am'
Certain quantum states are well-known to be particularly fragile in the presence of decoherence, as illustrated by Schrodinger's famous gedanken cat experiment. It has been better appreciated more recently that quantum states can be…
An assessment of the present status of the theory, some immediate tasks which are suggested thereby and some questions whose answers may require a longer breath since they relate to significant changes in the conceptual and mathematical…
The information loss paradox is often presented as an unavoidable consequence of well-established physics. However, in order for a genuine paradox to ensue, not-trivial assumptions about, e.g., quantum effects on spacetime, are necessary.…
It has been experimentally demonstrated that quantum coherence can persist in macroscopic phenomena [J.R. Friedman et al.,Nature, 406 (2000) 43]. To face the challenge of this new fact, in this article QM in its standard form is assumed to…
This review, intended for a popular audience, was originally published in the online magazine Aeon on 28 January 2014. It is reproduced on the arxiv with permission. The online version (without references) can be found at…
We provide an introduction to the theory of quantum measurements that is centered on the pivotal role played by John von Neumann's model. This introduction is accessible to students and researchers from outside the field of foundations of…
When one takes into account gravitation, the measurement of space and time cannot be carried out with infinite accuracy. When quantum mechanics is reformulated taking into account this lack of accuracy, the resolution of the measurement…
Laymen and sometimes even physicists think of natural sciences, in particular of theoretical and mathematical physics often as subjects, which unfold according to an intrinsic logical pattern, with the limitations being set only by the…
Many quantum paradoxes based on a realistic view of weak values were discussed in the last decades. They lead to astonishing conclusions such as the measurement of a spin component of a spin-1/2 particle resulting in $100\hbar$, the…
Correlations are a very important tool in the study of multipartite systems, both for classical and quantum ones. The discussion about the quantum nature of correlations permeates Physics since Einstein, Podolski and Rosen published their…
That gravitation can be understood as purely metric phenomenon depends crucially on the validity of a number of hypotheses which are summarised by the Einstein Equivalence Principle, the least well tested part of which being the…
We present the quantum measurement problem as a serious physics problem. Serious because without a resolution, quantum theory is not complete, as it does not tell how one should - in principle - perform measurements. It is physical in the…
In his book `Physics and Philosophy', Heisenberg suggested that the quantum world is one of ``potentialities or possibilities'' and that the classical realm is one of ``things or facts''. After ascertaining that his categories most…
In this note some philosophical thoughts and observations about mathematics are expressed, arranged as challenges to some common claims.
In this presentation, I argue that weak measurements empirically support the notion of quantum superpositions as statistical alternatives. In short, weak measurements show that Schroedinger's cat is already dead or alive before the…
This document is the second installment of three in the Cerro Grande Fire Series. Like its predecessor arXiv:quant-ph/0105039, "Notes on a Paulian Idea," it is a collection of letters written to various friends and colleagues, most of whom…
I will propose that the reality to which the quantum formalism implicitly refers is a kind of generalized history, the word history having here the same meaning as in the phrase sum-over-histories. This proposal confers a certain…
The physics of matter in the condensed state is concerned with problems in which the number of constituent particles is vastly greater than can be easily comprehended. The inherent physical limitations of the human mind are fundamental and…
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum theory is investigated from a philosophical point of view. It is justified the opinion that the philosophical attitude the Copenhagen interpretation is based on is in principle inevitable for a real…
In the canonical approach to quantization of gravity, one often uses relational clock variables and an interpretation in terms of conditional probabilities to overcome the problem of time. In this essay we show that these suffer from…