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An additive Hamiltonian plus Landauer's Principle yields quantum theory

Chris Fields

Published Nov 13, 2014• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

It is shown that no-signalling, a quantum of action, unitarity, detailed balance, Bell's theorem, the Hilbert-space representation of physical states and the Born rule all follow from the assumption of an additive Hamiltonian together with Landauer's principle. Common statements of the classical limit of quantum theory, as well as common assumptions made by interpretations of quantum theory, contradict additivity, Landauer's principle, or both.

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Quantum mechanics from five physical assumptions

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Five physical assumptions are proposed that together entail the general qualitative results, including the Born rule, of non-relativistic quantum mechanics by physical and information-theoretic reasoning alone. Two of these assumptions concern fundamental symmetries of physical interactions. The third concerns the Hilbert-space dimensions and the fourth and fifth the self-interaction Hamiltonians of the systems that function as "observers" within the theory. These assumptions are shown to provide a sufficient motivation for the usual Hilbert-space formalism, and to obviate the observation-related axioms and most interpretative assumptions with which minimal quantum mechanics is typically supplemented.

arXiv:1102.0740•Feb 3, 2011•1 citation

Summing to Uncertainty: On the Necessity of Additivity in Deriving the Born Rule

Jiaxuan Zhang

The emergence of intrinsic probability has long been one of the most important and puzzling problems in quantum mechanics, and the law most directly related to this problem is the Born rule. For a century, there have been many attempts to derive the Born rule as a theorem rather than postulating it. However, existing derivations of the Born rule are each based on different frameworks and have attracted different criticisms. The assumptions from which they start are also highly divergent, and the connections between them have not been sufficiently studied. These possible connections are very likely to be the key to answering questions about the origin of probability in quantum mechanics. This paper focuses on proving the necessity and indispensability of the additivity assumption in the derivation of the Born rule. This supports the view that the Born rule cannot be derived solely from other non-probabilistic quantum or additional postulates. We first prove that additivity cannot be derived from two other commonly used non-probabilistic additional assumptions, non-contextuality and normalization. Then we analyze the crucial role of the additivity assumption in five important existing derivations of the Born rule. These include Gleason's Theorem, Busch's extension of Gleason's Theorem, the Deutsch-Wallace Theorem, Zurek's envariance proof, and the Finkelstein-Hartle Theorem. We show that these derivations either depend heavily on the additivity assumption or lead to obvious loopholes due to the lack of additivity. We also point out some problems arised from the lack of a non-contextuality assumption. Our results provide a novel insight into the important role of additivity assumption in quantum measurement, as well as into the origin of probability in quantum mechanics.

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Derivation of the Born Rule and Operational Quantum Formalism in the Accessibility Framework through Boundary Reduction

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The Hamiltonian for Entangled States Cannot Be Additive

Kent A. Peacock

The assumption that the system Hamiltonian for entangled states is additive is widely used in orthodox quantum no-signalling arguments. It is shown that additivity implies a contradiction with the assumption that the system being studied is entangled.

arXiv:2401.00152•Dec 30, 2023•0 citations
It is shown that no-signalling, a quantum of action, unitarity, detailed balance, Bell's theorem, the Hilbert-space representation of physical states and the Born rule all follow from the assumption of an additive Hamiltonian together with Landauer's principle. Common statements of the classical limit of quantum theory, as well as common assumptions made by interpretations of quantum theory, contradict additivity, Landauer's principle, or both.
Five physical assumptions are proposed that together entail the general qualitative results, including the Born rule, of non-relativistic quantum mechanics by physical and information-theoretic reasoning alone. Two of these assumptions concern fundamental symmetries of physical interactions. The third concerns the Hilbert-space dimensions and the fourth and fifth the self-interaction Hamiltonians of the systems that function as "observers" within the theory. These assumptions are shown to provide a sufficient motivation for the usual Hilbert-space formalism, and to obviate the observation-related axioms and most interpretative assumptions with which minimal quantum mechanics is typically supplemented.
The emergence of intrinsic probability has long been one of the most important and puzzling problems in quantum mechanics, and the law most directly related to this problem is the Born rule. For a century, there have been many attempts to derive the Born rule as a theorem rather than postulating it. However, existing derivations of the Born rule are each based on different frameworks and have attracted different criticisms. The assumptions from which they start are also highly divergent, and the connections between them have not been sufficiently studied. These possible connections are very likely to be the key to answering questions about the origin of probability in quantum mechanics. This paper focuses on proving the necessity and indispensability of the additivity assumption in the derivation of the Born rule. This supports the view that the Born rule cannot be derived solely from other non-probabilistic quantum or additional postulates. We first prove that additivity cannot be derived from two other commonly used non-probabilistic additional assumptions, non-contextuality and normalization. Then we analyze the crucial role of the additivity assumption in five important existing derivations of the Born rule. These include Gleason's Theorem, Busch's extension of Gleason's Theorem, the Deutsch-Wallace Theorem, Zurek's envariance proof, and the Finkelstein-Hartle Theorem. We show that these derivations either depend heavily on the additivity assumption or lead to obvious loopholes due to the lack of additivity. We also point out some problems arised from the lack of a non-contextuality assumption. Our results provide a novel insight into the important role of additivity assumption in quantum measurement, as well as into the origin of probability in quantum mechanics.
This article examines the scope and limitations of quantum mechanics in its Schrödinger and Dirac formulations. Quantum theory provides an extraordinarily precise description of how physical states evolve, interfere, and produce measurable probabilities. However, like other foundational theories, it presupposes a specific mathematical structure—complex Hilbert spaces, linear unitary dynamics, an external time parameter, and the Born rule—that it does not itself explain. The work argues that quantum mechanics answers the question of how quantum states behave, but not the deeper question of why physical reality admits a state-based, probabilistic description at all. To address this missing level of explanation, the article places quantum mechanics within the broader framework of the Thermodynamic Imperative of Order (TIO) and the Granular Entropic Program (GEP). Within this framework, quantum states are interpreted as emergent, statistically stable macroscopic representations of typical correlations in high-dimensional configuration spaces. Linearity, unitarity, and the Born rule arise as necessary consequences of measure concentration and stability, rather than as fundamental postulates. The article does not propose modifications to quantum mechanics. Instead, it clarifies the domain of validity of the theory and explains why a framework with its structure and remarkable universality must exist if stable quantum phenomena are to be observed at all.
We show that the operational quantum formalism -- the Born rule, Lüders state updating, quantum interference, non-Markovian effective dynamics, and Bell inequality violation at the Tsirelson bound 222\sqrt{2}22​ -- arises within Accessibility Theory (AT) from the Aperture construction together with explicit coherence and locality assumptions stated in the paper. AT is a framework built on real graded spectral triples and a single algebraic selection principle. The Principle of Universal Accessibility Balance requires three independent measures of the complexity of a spectral triple -- its algebraic, gauge-theoretic, and geometric content -- to be exactly equal and minimized, uniquely selecting the algebra C⊕H⊕M3(C)\mathbb{C} \oplus \mathbb{H} \oplus M_3(\mathbb{C})C⊕H⊕M3​(C) and with it the Standard Model gauge group, particle content, four-dimensional Lorentzian spacetime, three generations, and gravitational dynamics. Restriction to a codimension-one geometric boundary reduces this algebra to its commutative center C⊕C⊕C\mathbb{C} \oplus \mathbb{C} \oplus \mathbb{C}C⊕C⊕C -- the Aperture -- which defines a permanent information bottleneck for any embedded observer. Coherence conditions on inference through this bottleneck, together with Gleason's theorem on the 48-dimensional internal Hilbert space, uniquely determine the Born rule; the remaining operational features follow from the same observer-level framework under the stated assumptions. At the ontological level the theory is deterministic and state-realist, while the operational quantum formalism appears at the observer level as a consequence of structurally limited access to the underlying algebraic reality.
We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes, but leaves the theory's basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory asserts that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation extends this intuitive picture of states and Hilbert-space trajectories to the case of open quantum systems as well. We provide independent justification for the partial-trace operation for density matrices, reformulate wave-function collapse in terms of an underlying interpolating dynamics, derive the Born rule from deeper principles, resolve several open questions regarding ontological stability and dynamics, address a number of familiar no-go theorems, and argue that our interpretation is ultimately compatible with Lorentz invariance. Along the way, we also investigate a number of unexplored features of quantum theory, including an interesting geometrical structure---which we call subsystem space---that we believe merits further study. We include an appendix that briefly reviews the traditional Copenhagen interpretation and the measurement problem of quantum theory, as well as the instrumentalist approach and a collection of foundational theorems not otherwise discussed in the main text.