Statistical to Quantum Mechanics

Qian Shang-Wu

By comparison between equations of motion of geometrical optics(GO)and that of classical statistical mechanics(CSM),we find that there should be an analogy between GO and CSM instead of GO and classical mechanics (CM).Furthermore,by comparison between the classical limit(CL)of quantum mechanics(QM)and CSM,we find that CL of QM is CSM not CM,hence we demonstrate that QM is a natural generalization of CSM instead of CM.

M. M. Sushchinskiǐ

Diederik Aerts, Jonito Aerts Arguëlles, Lester Beltran +2 more

Identical systems, or entities, are indistinguishable in quantum mechanics (QM), and the symmetrization postulate rules the possible statistical distributions of a large number of identical quantum entities. However, a thorough analysis on the historical development of QM attributes the origin of quantum statistics, in particular, Bose-Einstein statistics, to a lack of statistical independence of the micro-states of identical quantum entities. We have recently identified Bose-Einstein statistics in the combination of words in large texts, as a consequence of the entanglement created by the meaning carried by words when they combine in human language. Relying on this investigation, we put forward the hypothesis that entanglement, hence the lack of statistical independence, is due to a mechanism of contextual updating, which provides deeper reasons for the appearance of Bose-Einstein statistics in human language. However, this investigation also contributes to a better understanding of the origin of quantum mechanical statistics in physics. Finally, we provide new insights into the intrinsically random behaviour of microscopic entities that is generally assumed within classical statistical mechanics.

Carl S. Helrich

Ivo Sachs, Siddhartha Sen, James Sexton

Theory

Quantum mechanics is a statistical theory (see, e.g., Margenau [239, 240], Ballentine [25, 26], Klyshko [216], Holevo [115, 116], Khrennikov [192]). It cannot tell us anything about an individual quantum system, e.g., an electron or a photon. It predicts only probabilities for results of measurements for large ensembles of quantum systems. Classical statistical mechanics (CSM) does the same.Why are QM and CSM based on different probabilistic models?