Refutation of Orthomodular Quantum Logic

Pavel Pták, Sylvia Pulmannová

Colin James

Neal Zierler, Michael Schlessinger

Simon Kramer

We propose a semantic representation of the standard quantum logic QL within a classical, normal modal logic, and this via a lattice-embedding of orthomodular lattices into Boolean algebras with one modal operator. Thus our classical logic is a completion of the quantum logic QL. In other words, we refute Birkhoff and von Neumann's classic thesis that the logic (the formal character) of Quantum Mechanics would be non-classical as well as Putnam's thesis that quantum logic (of his kind) would be the correct logic for propositional inference in general. The propositional logic of Quantum Mechanics is modal but classical, and the correct logic for propositional inference need not have an extroverted quantum character. One normal necessity modality suffices to capture the subjectivity of observation in quantum experiments, and this thanks to its failure to distribute over classical disjunction. The key to our result is the translation of quantum negation as classical negation of observability.

Mladen Pavičić, Norman D. Megill

Abstract. It is shown that propositional calculuses of both quantum and classical logics are noncategorical. We find that quantum logic is in addition to an orthomodular lattice also modeled by a weakly orthomodular lattice and that classical logic is in addition to a Boolean algebra also modeled by a weakly distributive lattice. Both new models turn out to be non-orthomodular. We prove the soundness and completeness of the calculuses for the models. We also prove that all the operations in an orthomodular lattice are five-fold defined. In the end we discuss possible repercussions of our results to quantum computations and quantum computers.

Leopoldo Rom�n, B. Rumbos