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arXiv:0903.4888 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

The Born rule fails in cosmology

Don Nelson Page

Published Jul 3, 2009• 44 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

The Born rule may be stated mathematically as the rule that probabilities in quantum theory are expectation values of a complete orthogonal set of projection operators. This rule works for single laboratory settings in which the observer can distinguish all the different possible outcomes corresponding to the projection operators. However, theories of inflation suggest that the universe may be so large that any laboratory, no matter how precisely it is defined by its internal state, may exist in a large number of very distantly separated copies throughout the vast universe. In this case, no observer within the universe can distinguish all possible outcomes for all copies of the laboratory. Then normalized probabilities for the local outcomes that can be locally distinguished cannot be given by the expectation values of any projection operators. Thus the Born rule fails and must be replaced by another rule for observational probabilities in cosmology. The freedom of what this new rule is to be is the measure problem in cosmology. A particular volume-averaged form is proposed.

DOI
10.1088/1475-7516/2009/07/008

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The Born rule may be stated mathematically as the rule that probabilities in quantum theory are expectation values of a complete orthogonal set of projection operators. This rule works for single laboratory settings in which the observer can distinguish all the different possible outcomes corresponding to the projection operators. However, theories of inflation suggest that the universe may be so large that any laboratory, no matter how precisely it is defined by its internal state, may exist in a large number of very distantly separated copies throughout the vast universe. In this case, no observer within the universe can distinguish all possible outcomes for all copies of the laboratory. Then normalized probabilities for the local outcomes that can be locally distinguished cannot be given by the expectation values of any projection operators. Thus the Born rule fails and must be replaced by another rule for observational probabilities in cosmology. The freedom of what this new rule is to be is the measure problem in cosmology. A particular volume-averaged form is proposed.
Probabilities in quantum theory are traditionally given by Born's rule as the expectation values of projection operators. Here it is shown that Born's rule is insufficient in universes so large that they contain identical multiple copies of observers, because one does not have definite projection operators to apply. Possible replacements for Born's rule include using the expectation value of various operators that are not projection operators, or using various options for the average density matrix of a region with an observation. The question of what replacement to use is part of the measure problem in cosmology.
We study the quantum measurement problem in the context of an infinite, statistically uniform space, as could be generated by eternal inflation. It has recently been argued that when identical copies of a quantum measurement system exist, the standard projection operators and Born rule method for calculating probabilities must be supplemented by estimates of relative frequencies of observers. We argue that an infinite space actually renders the Born rule redundant, by physically realizing all outcomes of a quantum measurement in different regions, with relative frequencies given by the square of the wave-function amplitudes. Our formal argument hinges on properties of what we term the quantum confusion operator, which projects onto the Hilbert subspace where the Born rule fails, and we comment on its relation to the oft-discussed quantum frequency operator. This analysis unifies the classical and quantum levels of parallel universes that have been discussed in the literature, and has implications for several issues in quantum measurement theory. Replacing the standard hypothetical ensemble of measurements repeated ad infinitum by a concrete decohered spatial collection of experiments carried out in different distant regions of space provides a natural context for a statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics. It also shows how, even for a single measurement, probabilities may be interpreted as relative frequencies in unitary (Everettian) quantum mechanics. We also argue that after discarding a zero-norm part of the wave function, the remainder consists of a superposition of indistinguishable terms, so that arguably ``collapse'' of the wave function is irrelevant, and the ``many worlds'' of Everett's interpretation are unified into one. Finally, the analysis suggests a ``cosmological interpretation'' of quantum theory in which the wave function describes the actual spatial collection of identical quantum systems, and quantum uncertainty is attributable to the observer's inability to self-locate in this collection.
A simple proof is given that the probabilities of observations in a large universe are not given directly by Born's rule as the expectation values of projection operators in a global quantum state of the entire universe. An alternative procedure is proposed for constructing an averaged density matrix for a random small region of the universe and then calculating observational probabilities indirectly by Born's rule as conditional probabilities, conditioned upon the existence of an observation.
Abstract In ordinary situations involving a small part of the universe, Born's rule seems to work well for calculating probabilities of observations in quantum theory. However, there are a number of reasons for believing that it is not adequate for many cosmological purposes. Here a number of possible generalizations of Born's rule are discussed, explaining why they are consistent with the present statistical support for Born's rule in ordinary situations but can help solve various cosmological problems.
It is usually assumed that the quantum state is sufficient for deducing all probabilities for a system. This may be true when there is a single observer, but it is not true in a universe large enough that there are many copies of an observer. Then the probability of an observation cannot be deduced simply from the quantum state (say as the expectation value of the projection operator for the observation, as in traditional quantum theory). One needs additional rules to get the probabilities. What these rules are is not logically deducible from the quantum state, so the quantum state itself is insufficient for deducing observational probabilities. This is the measure problem of cosmology.
Why does quantum theory assign outcome probabilities by squared amplitudes rather than by some other function of the wave function? Existing results show that the Born rule is singled out by the structure of Hilbert space together with consistency requirements on probability measures, yet the physical role of measurement context is often treated as a mere choice of observable. Here we make the context interface explicit by introducing contextons, a unit of outcome capacity: the smallest increment in a context’s ability to produce one additional stable, externally accessible outcome record (within a fixed reliability threshold). We model the measurement interface as a realization condition that instantiates an orthogonal decomposition of possibilities into distinguishable outcomes. Under three basic requirements – normalization, additivity under coarse-graining of orthogonal outcomes, and representation invariance – outcome weights must take the quadratic form induced by the inner product, yielding and, for rank-one outcomes, . The Born weights are thus read as a context-conditioned “fit” measure: not an extra postulate, but the consistent outcome weight associated with realized distinguishability. The main contribution is conceptual: contextons operationalize measurement context as finite outcome capacity and make explicit the record-level structure on which standard uniqueness results act.