Following Birkhoff and von Neumann, quantum logic has traditionally been based on the lattice of closed linear subspaces of some Hilbert space, or, more generally, on the lattice of projections in a von Neumann algebra A. Unfortunately, the logical interpretation of these lattices is impaired by their nondistributivity and by various other problems. We show that a possible resolution of these difficulties, suggested by the ideas of Bohr, emerges if instead of single projections one considers elementary propositions to be families of projections indexed by a partially ordered set
C(A) of appropriate commutative subalgebras of A. In fact, to achieve both maximal generality and ease of use within topos theory, we assume that A is a so-called Rickart C*-algebra and that
C(A) consists of all unital commutative Rickart C*-subalgebras of A. Such families of projections form a Heyting algebra in a natural way, so that the associated propositional logic is intuitionistic: distributivity is recovered at the expense of the law of the excluded middle. Subsequently, generalizing an earlier computation for n × n matrices, we prove that the Heyting algebra thus associated to A arises as a basis for the internal Gelfand spectrum (in the sense of Banaschewski–Mulvey) of the “Bohrification”
A of A, which is a commutative Rickart C*-algebra in the topos of functors from
CA to the category of sets. We explain the relationship of this construction to partial Boolean algebras and Bruns–Lakser completions. Finally, we establish a connection between probability measures on the lattice of projections on a Hilbert space H and probability valuations on the internal Gelfand spectrum of
A for A = B(H).
A decade ago, Isham and Butterfield proposed a topos-theoretic approach to quantum mechanics, which meanwhile has been extended by Döring and Isham so as to provide a new mathematical foundation for all of physics. Last year, three of the present authors redeveloped and refined these ideas by combining the C*-algebraic approach to quantum theory with the so-called internal language of topos theory (Heunen et al. in arXiv:0709.4364 ). The goal of the present paper is to illustrate our abstract setup through the concrete example of the C*-algebra M n (ℂ) of complex n×n matrices. This leads to an explicit expression for the pointfree quantum phase space Σ n and the associated logical structure and Gelfand transform of an n-level system. We also determine the pertinent non-probabilisitic state-proposition pairing (or valuation) and give a very natural topos-theoretic reformulation of the Kochen–Specker Theorem. In our approach, the nondistributive lattice ℘(M n (ℂ)) of projections in M n (ℂ) (which forms the basis of the traditional quantum logic of Birkhoff and von Neumann) is replaced by a specific distributive lattice
O(Σn) of functions from the poset
C(Mn(C)) of all unital commutative C*-subalgebras C of M n (ℂ) to ℘(M n (ℂ)). The lattice
O(Σn) is essentially the (pointfree) topology of the quantum phase space Σ n , and as such defines a Heyting algebra. Each element of
O(Σn) corresponds to a “Bohrified” proposition, in the sense that to each classical context
C∈C(Mn(C)) it associates a yes-no question (i.e. an element of the Boolean lattice ℘(C) of projections in C), rather than being a single projection as in standard quantum logic. Distributivity is recovered at the expense of the law of the excluded middle (Tertium Non Datur), whose demise is in our opinion to be welcomed, not just in intuitionistic logic in the spirit of Brouwer, but also in quantum logic in the spirit of von Neumann.
The aim of this paper is to compare the two topos-theoretic approaches to quantum mechanics that may be found in the literature to date. The first approach, which we will call the contravariant approach, was originally proposed by Isham and Butterfield, and was later extended by Doering and Isham. The second approach, which we will call the covariant approach, was developed by Heunen, Landsman and Spitters. Motivated by coarse-graining and the Kochen-Specker theorem, the contravariant approach uses the topos of presheaves on a specific context category, defined as the poset of commutative von Neumann subalgebras of some given von Neumann algebra. In particular, the approach uses the spectral presheaf. The intuitionistic logic of this approach is given by the (complete) Heyting algebra of closed open subob jects of the spectral presheaf. We show that this Heyting algebra is, in a natural way, a locale in the ambient topos, and compare this locale with the internal Gelfand spectrum of the covariant approach. In the covariant approach, a non-commutative C*-algebra (in the topos Set) defines a commutative C*-algebra internal to the topos of covariant functors from the context category to the category of sets. We give an explicit description of the internal Gelfand spectrum of this commutative C*-algebra, from which it follows that the external spectrum is spatial. Using the daseinisation of self-adjoint operators from the contravariant approach, we give a new definition of the daseinisation arrow in the covariant approach and compare it with the original version. States and state-proposition pairing in both approaches are compared. We also investigate the physical interpretation of the covariant approach.