The quantum-interpretations tag has no wiki summary.
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The transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics
John Cramer’s transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics (TIQM) is billed as resolving the fuzzy agnosticism of the Copenhagen interpretation while avoiding the alleged ontological excesses of ...
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Is quantum mechanics intrinsically dualistic?
In just about every interpretation of quantum mechanics, there appears to be some form of dualism. Is this inevitable or not?
In the orthodox Copenhagen interpretation by Bohr and Heisenberg, the ...
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Does quantum computing rely on particular interpretations of quantum mechanics?
It is my understanding that quantum computing relies on quantum superposition and entanglement to work--qbits must exist in all states simultaneously before giving a particular result when observed.
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What combinations of realism, non-locality, and contextuality are ruled out in quantum theory?
Bell's inequality theorem, along with experimental evidence, shows that we cannot have both realism and locality. While I don't fully understand it, Leggett's inequality takes this a step further and ...
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Is every quantum measurement reducible to measurements of position and time?
I am currently studying Path Integrals and was unable to resolve the following problem. In the famous book Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, written by Feynman and Hibbs, it says (at the beginning ...
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Is Shor's algorithm a demonstration of the many worlds interpretation?
David Deutsch is very fond of pointing out Shor's integer factorization algorithm is a demonstration of the many worlds interpretation. As he often asked, where else did all the exponentially many ...
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Why do people still talk about bohmian mechanics/hidden variables [closed]
I was reading the Feynman lectures in physics and after thinking about it for a while it seems particularly unreasonable to talk about hidden variables. Let us say that the electron has some internal ...
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Is the universe fundamentally deterministic?
I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question. I realise that this maybe a borderline philosophical question at this point in time, therefore feel free to close this question if you ...
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Why do people rule out local hidden variables?
I bet the automatic response to my question would be "Bells Theorem" and of course I am not disputing Bells proof, I am however uncertain of one of his assumptions.
The so called "no conspiracy" ...
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What errors would one learn from Eliezer Yudkowsky's introduction to quantum physics?
Eliezer Yudkowsky wrote an introduction to quantum physics from a strictly realist standpoint. However, he has no qualifications in the subject and it is not his specialty. Does it paint an accurate ...
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Consequences of the new theorem in QM?
It seems there is a new theorem that changes the rules of the game in the interpretational debate on QM:
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-theorem-shakes-foundations-1.9392
Does this only leave ...
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Can quantum mechanics really be the same as underlying deterministic theory?
I am perplexed by recent papers by 't Hooft giving an explicit construction for an underlying deterministic theory based on integers that is indistinguishable from quantum mechanics at experimentally ...
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Arguments for and against Many Worlds?
I would like to hear the best arguments for and against the Many Worlds interpretation of QM.
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How much is quantum computation changing the interpretation of quantum theory, and, if at all, how?
At the beginning of quantum computation, David Deutsch made a strong claim that the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory was at the foundation of his ability to do what he did. There was a lot ...
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Quasiparticles in Bohmian mechanics
My questions are about de Broglie-Bohm "pilot wave" interpretation of quantum mechanics (a.k.a. Bohmian mechanics).
Do quasiparticles have any meaning in Bohmian mechanics, or not? Specifically, is ...
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Is the statistical interpretation of Quantum Mechanics dead?
I'm sure this question is a bit gauche for this site, but I'm just a mathematician trying to piece together some physical intuition.
*Question:*Is the statistical interpretation of Quantum ...
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Is the “consistent histories” interpretation of QM a “many worlds interpretation” in disguise?
The so called consistent histories interpretation is claimed to be a correction of the Copenhagen Interpretation. One of its aim, as much as I can see is to show that observers don't have any special ...
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The measure problem in the anthropic principle
The anthropic principle is based upon Bayesian reasoning applied to the ensemble of universes, or parts thereof, conditioned upon the existence of conscious observers. That still leaves us with the ...
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Given entanglement, why is it permissible to consider the quantum state of subsystems?
Quantum entanglement is the norm, is it not? All that exists in reality is the wave function of the whole universe, true? So how come we can blithely talk about the quantum state of subsystems if ...
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Maxim Raykin's “solution to the measurement problem” using infinitely many derivatives
Recently I was made aware of the following arXiv preprint by Maxim Raykin: Analytical Quantum Dynamics in Infinite Phase Space. As far as I understand it, Raykin's idea is to reinterpret quantum ...
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Why Quantum Mechanics as a non-fundamental effective theory?
My question: What (physical or mathematical) reasons (not philosophical) do some physicists ('t Hooft, Penrose, Smolin,...) argue/have in order to think that Quantum Mechanics could be substituted by ...
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Is the collapse of the wave function inherently time asymmetric?
Schroedinger's equation, as we all know, is time symmetric. In quantum field theory, we have to come up with a more sophisticated CPT reversal, but the essential point remains unchanged. However, the ...
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Should it be obvious that independent quantum states are composed by taking the tensor product?
My text introduces multi-quibt quantum states with the example of a state that can be "factored" into two (non-entangled) substates. It then goes on to suggest that it should be obvious1 that the ...
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Is a weak measurement the same as an unsharp measurement or POVM?
This is prompted by the strong claims made in Science 332, 1170 (2011) to have observed trajectories of photons, "something all of our textbooks and professors had always told us was impossible". I'm ...
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What criteria distinguishes causality from retrocausality?
The brilliant philosopher David Hume remarked that if two events are always found to be correlated to each other with one event happening prior to the other, we call the earlier event the cause and ...
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On the nature of the collapse of the wave function
The collapse of the wave function by measurements is one of the most mysterious properties of quantum mechanics.
At what scale does the wave function collapse? What are the conditions for a ...
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Will Determinism be ever possible?
What are the main problems that we need to solve to prove Laplace's determinism correct and overcome the Uncertainty principle?
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Is it possible to define a “it went through two slits” observable?
This concerns the famous two-slit experiment. Electrons or photons or your favorite particle, doesn't matter. As we all know, the attempt to detect which slit the quanta pass through leads to loss ...
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Are probabilities really tangible physical real numbers?
Probabilities are usually considered to be a real number between 0 and 1. A real number has an infinite decimal expansion. Are probabilities really real numbers? Is the infinite decimal expansion ...
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Is QFT mathematically self-consistent?
After recently going through a short program of self-study in quantum mechanics, I was surprised to find a quote attributed to Feynman essentially saying he was extremely bothered by the computational ...
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Is the quantum analog of a probability distribution the wave function or the density matrix?
Classically, probability distributions are nonnegative real measures over the space of all possible outcomes which add up to 1. What they mean is open to debate between Bayesians, frequentists and ...
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658 views
Why is Gleason's Theorem not enough to obtain Born Rule in Many Worlds Interpretation?
The Many Worlds interpretation suffer from at least 2 "wounds", the preferred basis issue and perhaps the most notorious probability issue.
How do you make sense of probability in a model where ...
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't Hooft for laypersons
I have looked at some of 't Hooft's recent papers and, unfortunately, they are well beyond my current level of comprehension. The same holds for the discussions that took place on this website. (See, ...
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What is the physical meaning of weak expectation values?
In the two-state formalism of Yakir Aharanov, the weak expectation value of an operator $A$ is $\frac{\langle \chi | A | \psi \rangle}{\langle \chi | \psi \rangle}$. This can have bizarre properties. ...
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If a fundamental theory exibits e.g. a mirror symmetry, in what sense it the underlying geometry real?
Are the more recently discovered symmetries in string theory such that the theories based on mirroring geometries are absolutely the same from an observable point of view?
I have mirror symmetry ...
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What experiments have been proposed to discriminate between interpretations of quantum mechanics?
There are a lot of potentially correct interpretations of quantum mechanics. While I've heard descriptions of a lot of them, I've never heard of an experiment being done to test any of them aside from ...
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Is the preferred basis problem solved?
Once and for all: Is the preferred basis problem in the Everettian Interpretation of QM considered solved by decoherence or not?
THere are a few people who claim that it's not, but it seems the vast ...
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What constitutes an observation/measurement in QM?
Fundamental notions of QM have to do with observation, a major example being The Uncertainty Principle.
What is the technical definition of an observation/measurement?
If I look at a QM system, it ...
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Information conservation during quantum measurement
Consider the following experiment. I take a spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particle and make a $\sigma_x$ measurement (measure the spin in the $x$ direction), then make a $\sigma_y$ measurement, then another ...
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What is the meaning of the Fourier transform of Feynman propagator?
I know $K(a,b,t)$ is the probability amplitude of find a particle that starts at point a in b in a time t later. There is also an expression that sometimes is called green function:
...
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Are many-worlds and the multiverse really the same thing?
Are many-worlds and the multiverse really the same thing?
Not too long ago, Susskind and Bousso uploaded the article "The Multiverse Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" with the thesis that the ...
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Bell's Theorem graph
My friends and I got into an argument about determinism, and I brought up that quantum events are random. But I couldn't prove it.
I found the Wikipedia page on Bell's theorem, which seems to imply ...
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Residues in QFT propagator
It is a well known fact that the location of the pole of a propagator (in QFT) can be interpreted as the physical mass.
Is there an interpretation for the residue of the propagator?
Note: I´m ...
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Quantum Physics and the Law of Large Numbers
On page 1 of this recent paper by Bousso and Susskind we read.
This question is not about philosophy.
Without a precise form of decoherence,
one cannot claim that anything really
"happened", ...
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Uniqueness of quasiclassical consistent histories
The current zeitgeist here is on interpretations of quantum mechanics, so let me add my own two cents here. As you may know, consistent histories is an alternative interpretation proposed in a series ...
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What happens when particle-antiparticle pairs annihilate in MWI?
The many-worlds interpretation of quantum physics is built around a configuration space, where the position of a particle is three components of the position of that universe.
What happens with ...
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Many-worlds: Where does the energy come from?
With regard to the theory that each time a wave function collapses the universe splits so that each possible outcome really exists - where does all the energy required to create all the new universes ...
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How does Bell's theorem rule out the possibility of local hidden variables?
It seems to be common consensus that the world is non-deterministic and this is proved by Bell's theorem.
But even though Bell's experiments proved that the theory of quantum mechanics work, How does ...
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Canonical Commutation Relations
Is it logically sound to accept the canonical commutation relation (CCR)
$$[x,p]~=~i\hbar$$
as a postulate of quantum mechanics? Or is it more correct to derive it given some form for $p$ in the ...
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Temporal part of Quantum Wavefunction
I was hoping that someone could give me the more fundamental reason that we take as the temporal part of a quantum wavefunction the function $e^{-i\omega t}$ and not $e^{+i\omega t}$? Clearly ...
