Other Types of Physics

Andrew Soltau

Abstract: Barbour shows that time does not exist in the physical world, and similar conclusions are reached by others such as Deutsch, Davies and Woodward. Every possible configuration of a physical environment simply exists in the universe. The system is objectively static. Observation, however, is an inherently transtemporal phenomenon, involving actual or effective change of the configuration, collapse. Since, in a static environment, all possible configurations exist, transtemporal reality is of the logical type of a movie. The frame of a movie film is of one logical type, an element of a set of frames, the movie, itself of a second logical type. In a static nocollapse universe, the configurations are of the first logical type, transtemporal reality of the second. To run, the movie requires iteration, a third logical type. Phenomenal consciousness is subjectively experienced as of this third logical type with regard to physical configurations. Everett's formulation clearly describes the transtemporal reality of an observer, which follows the physical in the linear dynamics, but departs from it on observation, giving rise to the the appearance of collapse, and the alternation of

Valentino Braitenberg

W. F. G. Swann

Bauer, Andreas, Alexander Nietner

The content of this paper can be roughly organized into a three-level hierarchy of generality. At the first, most general level, we introduce a new language which allows us to express various categorical structures in a systematic and explicit manner in terms of so-called 2-schemes. Although 2-schemes can formalize categorical structures such as symmetric monoidal categories, they are not limited to this, and can be used to define structures with no categorical analogue. Most categorical structures come with an effective graphical calculus such as string diagrams for symmetric monoidal categories, and the same is true more generally for interesting 2-schemes. In this work, we focus on one particular non-categorical 2-scheme, whose instances we refer to as tensor types. At the second level of the hierarchy, we work out different flavors of this 2-scheme in detail. The effective graphical calculus of tensor types is that of tensor networks or Penrose diagrams, that is, string diagrams without a flow of time. As such, tensor types are similar to compact closed categories, though there are various small but potentially important differences. Also, the two definitions use completely different mechanisms despite both being examples of 2-schemes. At the third level of the hierarchy, we provide a long list of different families of concrete tensor types, in a way which makes them accessible to concrete computations, motivated by their potential use in physics. Different tensor types describe different types of physical models, such as classical or quantum physics, deterministic or statistical physics, many-body or single-body physics, or matter with or without symmetries or fermions.

Detlef Dürr, Stefan Teufel

Hisato Shirai

Quantum mechanics is widely believed to be inconsistent with local realism because J.S. Bell proved the contradiction between quantum mechanics and the hidden variable theories based on reality and locality of matter. As described herein, the relation between quantum mechanics and local realism is discussed. This paper presents the question of whether any version of local realism is contradicted by quantum mechanics. The answer is negative. An interpretation is proposed by which the contradiction is explained using physical variables of two types: (1) physical variables of the first type, such as positions and angles (i.e. coordinates), are realistic variables and always possess definite values independently of measurements; (2) those of the second type, such as momenta, angular momenta, and spins (i.e., conserved quantities), are non-realistic variables, which possess no value before measurement. Value definiteness of the first type provides a reliable basis to physical reality of matter, and non-reality of the second type might solve the problem of inconsistency between quantum mechanics and local realism.