Perception of Quantum Systems

Ivan S. Maksymov

Isayeva Elmira

Luis Pedro García-Pintos, Adolfo del Campo

We formulate limits to perception under continuous quantum measurements by comparing the quantum states assigned by agents that have partial access to measurement outcomes. To this end, we provide bounds on the trace distance and the relative entropy between the assigned state and the actual state of the system. These bounds are expressed solely in terms of the purity and von Neumann entropy of the state assigned by the agent, and are shown to characterize how an agent's perception of the system is altered by access to additional information. We apply our results to Gaussian states and to the dynamics of a system embedded in an environment illustrated on a quantum Ising chain.

Andrei Yu. Khrennikov

Quantum measurement theory is applied to quantum-like modeling of coherent generation of perceptions and emotions and generally for emotional coloring of conscious experiences. In quantum theory, a system should be separated from an observer. The brain performs self-measurements. To model them, we split the brain into two subsystems, unconsciousness and consciousness. They correspond to a system and an observer. The states of perceptions and emotions are described through the tensor product decomposition of the unconscious state space; similarly, there are two classes of observables, for conscious experiencing of perceptions and emotions, respectively. Emotional coloring is coupled to quantum contextuality: emotional observables determine contexts. Such contextualization reduces degeneration of unconscious states. The quantum-like approach should be distinguished from consideration of the genuine quantum physical processes in the brain (cf. Penrose and Hameroff). In our approach the brain is a macroscopic system which information processing can be described by the formalism of quantum theory. The paper is concluded with experimental test of contextual emotional coloring of conscious experiences based on Bell type inequalities which are treated in the contextual framework.

Rob Clifton

Bogusław Fugiel

I propose a quantum-like approach to the description of melody perception where classic intervals that constitute a melody are replaced by acoustical qubits, i.e. two-level acoustic systems, using Shepard tones for this purpose. Each of such qubits is considered to be a superposition of two intervals, ascending and descending, that form an octave when put together. Any melody perception can thus be treated analogously to a sequence of quantum measurements. Because of an acoustical collapse, analogous to the wave function reduction in quantum mechanics, just a single interval, ascending or descending, can be heard each time. Different melodies generated by the same sequence of acoustical qubits can be then perceived.