Abstract In this essay I discuss certain analogies between quantum incompatibility and entanglement. It is an expanded version of my talk presented at Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in memoriam Paul Busch, held in York in June 2019.
Abstract In the context of a physical theory, two devices, A and B , described by the theory are called incompatible if the theory does not allow the existence of a third device C that would have both A and B as its components. Incompatibility is a fascinating aspect of physical theories, especially in the case of quantum theory. The concept of incompatibility gives a common ground for several famous impossibility statements within quantum theory, such as ‘no-cloning’ and ‘no information without disturbance’; these can be all seen as statements about incompatibility of certain devices. The purpose of this paper is to give a concise overview of some of the central aspects of incompatibility.
June 1997, “Painting My Stripes” I am just returning from the library, where – completely by accident – I ran into and read an entertaining little article: A Peres, “Einstein, Gödel, Bohr,” Foundations of Physics 15 (2), 1985, 201–205. I was especially entertained by your closing line, “Any attempt to inject realism in physical theory is bound to lead to inconsistencies.” Do you have any other writings (beside the AJP paper with Zurek) where you expand upon the ideas presented in this? In connection to this, I have another question. If I recall correctly, you once told me that you finally came to grips (“interpretationally,” that is) with quantum mechanics in 1986. (Perhaps I have the year wrong, but that's part of the question.) Would you be willing to expand upon that point? In particular, was your arrived-at comfort founded upon the line I quote above? I suppose I ask these questions for several reasons, perhaps the strongest of which is a renewed dilettante interest in the foundations of quantum theory. Among other things, I am trying to plan (or dream up!) a talk for the Hull conference in September to be titled something like: “Quantum Information Theory's Implications for the Foundations of the Quantum as a Whole.” My own pet “idea for an idea” (as Wheeler would say) is that the quantum theoretical description – along with its Hilbert-space structure – is forced upon us when the information we have about a physical situation/system is of a certain variety.