Hilbert space, independence, and generalized probability

Stanley Gudder

Andrei Yu. Khrennikov

The notion of context (complex of physical conditions) is basic in this paper. We show that the main structures of quantum theory (interference of probabilities, Born's rule, complex probabilistic amplitudes, Hilbert state space, representation of observables by operators) are present in a latent form in the classical Kolmogorov probability model. However, this model should be considered as a calculus of contextual probabilities. In our approach it is forbidden to consider abstract context independent probabilities: ``first context and then probability.'' We start with the conventional formula of total probability for contextual (conditional) probabilities and then we rewrite it by eliminating combinations of incompatible contexts from consideration. In this way we obtain interference of probabilities without to appeal to the Hilbert space formalism or wave mechanics. However, we did not just reconstruct the probabilistic formalism of conventional quantum mechanics. Our contextual probabilistic model is essentially more general and, besides the projection to the complex Hilbert space, it has other projections. The most important new prediction is the possibility (at least theoretical) of appearance of hyperbolic interference.

Javier Cuesta, Michael M. Wolf

It d-pends. Wigner’s symmetry theorem implies that transformations that preserve transition probabilities of pure quantum states are linear maps on the level of density operators. We investigate the stability of this implication. On the one hand, we show that any transformation that preserves transition probabilities up to an additive ε in a separable Hilbert space admits a weak linear approximation, i.e., one relative to any fixed observable. This implies the existence of a linear approximation that is 4εd–close in Hilbert-Schmidt norm, with d the Hilbert space dimension. On the other hand, we prove that a linear approximation that is close in norm and independent of d does not exist in general. To this end, we provide a lower bound that depends logarithmically on d.

Arthur Gretton

Andrei Yu. Khrennikov

The notion of context (complex of physical conditions) is basic in this paper. We show that the main structures of quantum theory (interference of probabilities, Born’s rule, complex probabilistic amplitudes, Hilbert state space, representation of observables by operators) are present in a latent form in the classical Kolmogorov probability model. However, this model should be considered as a calculus of contextual probabilities. In our approach it is forbidden to consider abstract context independent probabilities: “first context and then probability.” We start with the conventional formula of total probability for contextual (conditional) probabilities and then we rewrite it by eliminating combinations of incompatible contexts from consideration. In this way we obtain interference of probabilities without to appeal to the Hilbert space formalism or wave mechanics. However, we did not just reconstruct the probabilistic formalism of conventional quantum mechanics. Our contextual probabilistic model is essentially more general and, besides the projection to the complex Hilbert space, it has other projections. The most important new prediction is the possibility (at least theoretical) of appearance of hyperbolic interference. A projection of the classical contextual probabilistic model to the hyperbolic Hilbert space (a module over the commutative two dimensional Clifford algebra) has some similarities with the projection to the complex Hilbert space. However, in the hyperbolic quantum mechanics the principle of superposition is violated. Our realistic (but contextual!) approach to quantum mechanics does not contradict to various “no‐go theorems”, e.g., von Neumann, Bell, Kochen‐Specker. We emphasize that our projection of the classical probabilistic model to the complex Hilbert space is based on two incompatible observables (“reference observables”), e.g., the position and the momentum, or the position and the energy. Only these two observables can be considered as objective properties of quantum systems.