www.philipgoyal.org Quantum theory is an extraordinarily successful physical theory. But what does it mean? What implications does it have for the mechanical conception of Nature that underlies classical physics? Remarkably, some eighty years after the creation of quantum theory, we still lack clear answers to these questions. In this paper, we discuss the nature of the obstacles that stand in our way, and describe recent work to overcome them by attempting to reconstruct the mathematics of quantum theory from a small number of simple physical ideas.
www.philipgoyal.org Quantum theory is an extraordinarily successful physical theory. But what does it mean? What implications does it have for the mechanical conception of Nature that underlies classical physics? Remarkably, some eighty years after the creation of quantum theory, we still lack clear answers to these questions. In this paper, we discuss the nature of the obstacles that stand in our way, and describe recent work to overcome them by attempting to reconstruct the mathematics of quantum theory from a small number of simple physical ideas.
Quantum theory poses deep challenges to the mechanical conception of reality that underlies classical physics. Yet today, over eighty years after its creation, its implications for our picture of reality remain enshrouded in uncertainty. In view of the current search for a more comprehensive theory of physics (a so-called theory of everything), it is vital that these implications be clearly elucidated. In this article, I describe the nature of the challenge posed by quantum theory, and outline efforts that have been made to better understand its nonclassical features, such as non-locality. In particular, I discuss the informational perspective, which, through the study of quantum information processing, has provided deep insights into the nature of quantum reality, and has also revitalized the long-standing quest to reconstruct the content of the rather mysterious mathematical formalism of quantum theory from a set of crisp physical principles. Finally, I indicate some implications of recent reconstructive work for the search for a theory of quantum gravity, and, more broadly, for our picture of physical reality.
Quantum mechanics is an extraordinarily successful scientific theory. But more than 100 years after it was first introduced, the interpretation of the theory remains controversial. This Element introduces some of the most puzzling questions at the foundations of quantum mechanics and provides an up-to-date and forward-looking survey of the most prominent ways in which physicists and philosophers of physics have attempted to resolve them. Topics covered include nonlocality, contextuality, the reality of the wavefunction and the measurement problem. The discussion is supplemented with descriptions of some of the most important mathematical results from recent work in quantum foundations, including Bell's theorem, the Kochen-Specker theorem and the PBR theorem.
Quantum mechanics, one of the most successful theories in the history of science, was created to account for physical systems not describable by classical physics. Though it is consistent with all experiments conducted thus far, many of its core concepts (amplitudes, global phases, etc.) can not be directly accessed and its interpretation is still the subject of intense debate, more than 100 years since it was introduced. So, a fundamental question is why this particular mathematical model is the one that nature chooses, if indeed it is the correct model. In the past two decades there has been a renewed effort to determine what physical or informational principles define quantum mechanics. In this paper, recent attempts at establishing reasonable physical principles are reviewed and their degree of success is tabulated. An alternative approach using joint quasi-probability distributions is shown to provide a common basis of representing most of the proposed principles. It is argued that having a common representation of the principles can provide intuition and guidance to relate current principles or advance new principles. The current state of affairs, along with some alternative views are discussed.
Quantum theory is the soul of contemporary physics. It was discovered in an adventurous way, under the urge to solve the puzzles posed by atomic spectra and blackbody radiation. But after its invention, it immediately became clear that it was not just a theory of specific physical systems: it was rather a new language of universal applicability. Already in 1928, the theory had received solid mathematical foundations by Hilbert, von Neumann, and Nordheim, and this work was brought to completion in the monumental work of von Neumann, in the form that we still study nowadays. The theory is extraordinarily successful, and its predictions have been confirmed to an astonishing level of precision in a large spectrum of experiments. However, almost 90 years after von Neumann's book, quantum theory remains mysterious. Its mathematical formulation – based on Hilbert spaces and self-adjoint operators – is far from having an intuitive interpretation. The association of physical systems to Hilbert spaces whose unit vectors represent pure states, the representation of transformations by unitary operators and of observables by self-adjoint operators – all such postulates look artificial and ad hoc . A slightly more operational approach is provided by the C * -algebraic formulation of quantum theory – still, this formulation relies on the assumption that observables form an algebra , where the physical meanings of the multiplication and the sum are far from clear. In short, the postulates of quantum theory impose mathematical structures without providing any simple reason for this choice: the mathematics of Hilbert spaces is adopted as a magic blackbox that “works well” at producing experimental predictions. However, in a satisfactory axiomatization of a physical theory the mathematical structures should emerge as a consequence of postulates that have a direct physical interpretation. By this we mean postulates referring, e.g., to primitive notions like physical system, measurement, or process, rather than notions like, e.g., Hilbert space, C * -algebra, unit vector, or selfadjoint operator. The crucial question thus remains unanswered: why quantum theory? Which are the principles at the basis of the theory? A case that is often invoked in contrast is that of Special Relativity theory, which directly follows from the simple understandable principle of relativity.
To date, quantum mechanics has proven to be our most successful theoretical model. However, it is still surrounded by a "mysterious halo" that can be summarized in a simple but challenging question: Why quantum phenomena are not understood under the same logic as classical ones? Although this is an open question (probably without an answer), from a pragmatist's point of view there is still room enough to further explore the quantum world, marveling ourselves with new physical insights. We just need to look back in the historical evolution of the quantum theory and thoroughly reconsider three key issues: (1) how this has developed since its early stages at a conceptual level, (2) what kind of experiments can be performed at present in a laboratory, and (3) what nonstandard conceptual models are available to extract some extra information. This contribution is aimed at providing some answers (and, perhaps, also raising some issues) to these questions through one of such models, namely Bohmian mechanics, a hydrodynamic formulation of the quantum theory, which is currently trying to open new pathways of understanding. Specifically, the Chapter constitutes a brief and personal overview on the historic and contextual evolution of this quantum formulation, its physical meaning and interest (leaving aside metaphysical issues), and how it may help to overcome some preconceived paradoxical aspects of the quantum theory.
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably takes the quantum formalism as the starting point for philosophical reflection and analysis. I argue that this methodology is particularly inappropriate, for it invariably marginalizes much of the theory's content, both that implicit in modelling heuristics and experimental practices, and that encapsulated in the mathematical structures of its formalism. In addition, the prevailing methodology offers little protection against undue influence by metaphysically-laden language which invariably accompanies the formalism.
Here, I summarize an alternative methodology whose goal is to ensure that an interpretational project take into account all forms of theoretic content. The methodology harnesses the recent results of the quantum reconstruction program. These results distil the mathematical content of the quantum formalism into physical principles and assumptions, which are more readily philosophically digestible than the formalism itself, and bracket much of its metaphysically-laden language.
As a case study of reconstruction-based interpretation, I describe the reconstruction of the identical particle formalism, and its step-by-step interpretation, highlighting the key questions that drive the interpretation forwards and the techniques and stances that are employed in each step. The interpretation yields a novel metaphysical profile for systems of identical particles as potential parts of a whole, which can be traced step-by-step to elementary experimental data and the reconstruction's physical postulates and assumptions. I also describe some of the pitfalls that one faces in any attempt to directly interpret the identical particle formalism.