Until recently observables have been nothing more than self-adjoint operators.However, due to axiomatic formulations of quantum mechanics, observables have now been placed in a more abstract setting.With the advent of this abstract concept comes the natural questions concerning uniqueness and existence.The uniqueness problem considered here seeks to answer the question: if two bounded observables have the same expectations in every state, are the observables equal?We say that an observable z is the sum of two bounded observables x and y if the expectation of z is the sum of the expectations of x and y for every state.The existence problem would pose the question: does the sum of two bounded observables exist?The author has found only partial answers to these questions.It is shown that the uniqueness property holds for simultaneous observables and certain classes of nonsimultaneous or complementary observables.The existence property holds for simultaneous observables, and a counterexample is given to show that this property does not hold in general.The last section of this paper considers systems in which the existence and uniqueness properties are known to hold.
Until recently observables have been nothing more than self-adjoint operators.However, due to axiomatic formulations of quantum mechanics, observables have now been placed in a more abstract setting.With the advent of this abstract concept comes the natural questions concerning uniqueness and existence.The uniqueness problem considered here seeks to answer the question: if two bounded observables have the same expectations in every state, are the observables equal?We say that an observable z is the sum of two bounded observables x and y if the expectation of z is the sum of the expectations of x and y for every state.The existence problem would pose the question: does the sum of two bounded observables exist?The author has found only partial answers to these questions.It is shown that the uniqueness property holds for simultaneous observables and certain classes of nonsimultaneous or complementary observables.The existence property holds for simultaneous observables, and a counterexample is given to show that this property does not hold in general.The last section of this paper considers systems in which the existence and uniqueness properties are known to hold.
Continuing the development [4] of an aspect of the approach to the axiomatization of quantum mechanics of G. W. Mackey [3], we consider here the real linear space X of signed measures on the set P of events generated by the states, and the set F0 of linear functionals on X which are induced in a natural way by the bounded observables. A necessary and sufficient condition for two events to be simultaneously measurable is found in terms of the order structure of F0, with the following consequence: if F0 is a lattice, P is deterministic. At the opposite extreme, F0 is said to be an anti-lattice1 if the greatest lower bound exists only for comparable pairs of its elements and we show in this case that the center of P is trivial. Our results extend those of R. V. Kadison [l], in which F0 and P are the self-adjoint operators and projections respectively in a uniformly closed self-adjoint operator algebra. While the framework and plan of the proofs were inspired by Kadison's work, almost none of the apparatus used by him is available here with the result that, in detail, our techniques are quite different from his. Let P be a weakly modular partially ordered set (see [4]). A function x from P to the non-negative real numbers and + oo is said to be a measure if x(0) =0 and x is countably additive in the sense that whenever {a,} is a pairwise orthogonal sequence of elements of P, then x(Ua?) = 2Zxiad- If x is a measure and {bt} EP is an increasing (decreasing) sequence with supremum (infimum) b, then x(&?) —*x(6). A countably additive function x from P to the extended real numbers is a signed measure if x(0) =0 and x takes on at most one of the values + =o and — oo ; x is finite if x(l) is finite. Define the functions 5 and i on the signed measures on P by six) = sup(x(a) : aEP\, fx) =inf {x(a): aEP} and set ||x|| =s(x)—?(x). Clearly ||x|| < oo if and only if x is finite. It iseasy toseethat||x|| = sup {x(a)— xia'):aE P} ■ Lemma 1. Let X be a real linear space of finite signed measures on P. Then the function || || defined above is a norm for X and, under this norm and its natural partial ordering, X is a partially ordered normed linear space. That is,2
We present in this paper a set of postulates for a physical system and deduce from these the main general features of the quantum theory of stationary states. Our theory is strictly operational in the sense that only the observables of the physical system are involved in the postulates. The collection of all bounded self-adj oint operators on a Hilbert space, which has previously been used as a mathematical model for the observables in quantum mechanics, satisfy the postulates, as do a variety of considerably more general mathematical structures. We show that for any two observables there exists a pure state of the system (this term being defined essentially as done by von Neumann and Weyl) in which they have different (expectation) values. Each observable has a spectral resolution, and a state of the system induces, in a natural way, a probability distribution on the range of spectral values of each observable. A number of observables are simultaneously observable if and only if they commute (although the product of two observables is not defined in general, a reasonable notion of commutativity can be introduced). Inasmuch as Hilbert space plays no role in our theory, our proofs are necessarily of a different character from the proofs of these results for the case of the system of all bounded selfadjoint operators. Actually, Hilbert space appears to be somewhat inadequate as a state space even for the latter system, in that there exist pure states of the system which cannot be represented in the usual way by rays of the Hilbert space. The postulates are partly algebraic and partly metric. The algebraic postulates require essentially that an observable can be multiplied by real numbers and raised to integral powers, and that any two observables can be added. It is assumed that the usual algebraic laws are satisfied so that (1) the observables can be treated like the elements of a linear space, and (2) the usual rules for dealing with polynomials in one variable with real coefficients remain valid when the variable is replaced by an observable. It is not assumed that two observables have a product. The metric postulates require that for each observable there be defined a kind of maximum numerical value, which plays the part of a norm, and has various properties in accord with its physical significance. While this norm is quite essential to the development of the theory, an interesting consequence of the theory is that the norm can be (uniquely) defined in a purely algebraic fashion. This shows that the objective features of a physical system,-the spectral values and probability distributions of the observables, and the pure states,-are completely determined by the algebra of observables, i.e., by the rules for addition, scalar multiplication, and powers, of observables.
Abstract The existence of a real linear space structure on the set of observables of a quantum system—i.e., the requirement that the linear combination of two generally non-commuting observables A, B is an observable as well—is a fundamental postulate of the quantum theory yet before introducing any structure of algebra. However, it is by no means clear how to choose the measuring instrument of a general observable of the form aA+bB a A + b B ( a,b∈R a , b ∈ R ) if such measuring instruments are given for the addends observables A and B when they are incompatible observables. A mathematical version of this dilemma is how to construct the spectral measure of f(aA+bB) f ( a A + b B ) out of the spectral measures of A and B. We present such a construction with a formula which is valid for general unbounded self-adjoint operators A and B, whose spectral measures may not commute, and a wide class of functions f:R→C f : R → C . In the bounded case, we prove that the Jordan product of A and B (and suitably symmetrized polynomials of A and B) can be constructed with the same procedure out of the spectral measures of A and B. The formula turns out to have an interesting operational interpretation and, in particular cases, a nice interplay with the theory of Feynman path integration and the Feynman–Kac formula.
In classical mechanics, as we know, all observables commute with each other and therefore belong to the same “commuting set.” This means that – in principle – we can measure all observables simultaneously. Then, the state manifests itself as a collection of properties (of values of observables) (see Sec. 1.1), and as such it is observable. On the other hand, quantum-mechanical observables may not commute (see Subsec. 2.1.5). As a consequence, the state is not just a collection of observable values (see also Sec. 2.3) so that we may ask ourselves whether it is observable or not, and therefore raise the following question: What is the nature of the wave function? Is it simply a mathematical tool, i.e. does it only represent the sum of all that we can know about a system? Or does it have an ontological status? Since the early days of quantum mechanics, this question has been very popular. As a first attempt, de Broglie tried to interpret the wave function as describing, in classical terms, a wave field that envelopes a classical particle (see also Subsec. 16.3.2). This theory should predict the existence of empty waves, but several experiments have shown negative results (see also the end of Sec. 9.6). More recently, many physicists have tried to propose some methods in order to measure the wave function. Here we shortly report on some of these proposals and discuss to what extent the quantum state can be measured.
There has been a strong recent interest in applying quantum theory (QT) outside physics, including in cognitive science. We analyze the applicability of QT to two basic properties in opinion polling. The first property (response replicability) is that, for a large class of questions, a response to a given question is expected to be repeated if the question is posed again, irrespective of whether another question is asked and answered in between. The second property (question order effect) is that the response probabilities frequently depend on the order in which the questions are asked. Whenever these two properties occur together, it poses a problem for QT. The conventional QT with Hermitian operators can handle response replicability, but only in the way incompatible with the question order effect. In the generalization of QT known as theory of positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs), in order to account for response replicability, the POVMs involved must be conventional operators. Although these problems are not unique to QT and also challenge conventional cognitive theories, they stand out as important unresolved problems for the application of QT to cognition. Either some new principles are needed to determine the bounds of applicability of QT to cognition, or quantum formalisms more general than POVMs are needed.
For sharp quantum observables the following facts hold: (i) if we have a collection of sharp observables and each pair of them is jointly measurable, then they are jointly measurable all together; (ii) if two sharp observables are jointly measurable, then their joint observable is unique and it gives the greatest lower bound for the effects corresponding to the observables; (iii) if we have two sharp observables and their every possible two outcome partitionings are jointly measurable, then the observables themselves are jointly measurable. We show that, in general, these properties do not hold. Also some possible candidates which would accompany joint measurability and generalize these apparently useful properties are discussed.