Probing Weinberg's nonlinear quantum mechanics

Debendranath Sahoo

Gilbert Reinisch

Joseph Polchinski

I show that Weinberg's nonlinear quantum mechanics leads either to communication via Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen correlations, or to communications between branches of the wave function.Received 18 June 1990DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.66.397©1991 American Physical Society

Bogdan Mielnik

Contrary to the opinion of J. Polchinski [Phys.Rev.Lett. {\bf 66}, 397-400 (1991)], the phenomenon of superluminal messages in nonlinear versions of quantum mechanics is not a specific difficulty in a class of theories formulated by S. Weinberg [Ann.Phys. (N.Y.), {\bf 194}, 336-386 (1989)]. It appears in all schemes which try to enlarge the orthodox class of observables, while conserving the traditional structure of the pure and mixed states.

Pang Xiao Feng

Marek Czachor

Recenty Abrams and Lloyd have proposed a fast algorithm that is based on a nonlinear evolution of a state of a quantum computer. They have explicitly used the fact that nonlinear evolutions in Hilbert spaces do not conserve scalar products of states, and applied a description of separated systems taken from Weinberg's nonlinear quantum mechanics. On the other hand it is known that violation of orthogonality combined with the Weinberg-type description generates unphysical, arbitrarily fast influences between noninteracting systems. It was not therefore clear whether the algorithm is fast because arbitrarily fast unphysical effects are involved. In these notes I show that this is not the case. I analyze both algorithms proposed by Abrams and Lloyd on concrete, simple models of nonlinear evolution. The description I choose is known to be free of the unphysical influences (therefore it is not the Weinberg one). I show, in particular, that the correct local formalism allows even to simplify the algorithm.