POSITION AND MOMENTUM ACCORDING TO PARK AND MARGENAU

Paul Busch, PEKKA J. LAHTI, Juha-Pekka Pellonpää +1 more

Henry Krips

A new approach to axiomatizing quantum theory is suggested that overcomes some of the problems of the more usual methods. The measurement process is not left as a primitive under the new approach, and the density operator is taken as describing the fundamental physical properties of a system. Some differences from the Bohr and Margenau–Park approaches are mentioned.

Paul A. Benioff, H. Ekstein

A direct experimental test for local commutativity (i.e., $[A, B]=0$ if $A$ and $B$ are associated with mutually spacelike regions) is proposed. It consists of a comparison of the distribution of outcomes of $A$ measurements in the two cases where $A$ alone is measured (no measurement apparatus for $B$ present) and where both are measured on the same sample, in short, a test of the compatibility of the two observation procedures for $A$ and $B$. The implication compatibility \ensuremath{\rightarrow} commutativity (substantially proved by von Neumann, but questioned by Park and Margenau) is proved in a stronger form, with close attention paid to the distinction between different procedures corresponding to a given self-adjoint operator.

Mark Burgess