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Revista de Investigación de Física

Implicaciones de la Medición Cuántica en la Naturaleza de la Realidad

Oscar S. Monroy Cárdenas, Marco Merma, Javier Montenegro Joo

Published Apr 22, 2025• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The problem of quantum measurement is analyzed, showing its limitations, when trying to reach objective reality starting from the conventional perspective that the universe is an isolated and self-contained system. The fundamental aspects on which the analysis of quantum measurement is based are the quantum superposition principle and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The result that the quantum superposition principle leads to is that the process of quantum measurement would never end when trying to reach objective reality. Using the wave packet model, the result that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to is that the harmonic waves that make up the packet have a constant phase difference, which corresponds to a vibration or fraction of vibration, contradicting the nature of the field. quantum. By using Fourier analysis, it is deduced that the state of a physical system would be completely defined by a spectral distribution of vibration frequencies and, furthermore, it is deduced that every physical system would have a fundamental resonance frequency associated with the underlying vacuum of the system. Consequently, measuring devices designed based on the new proposal would have increasingly greater resolving power, as long as their operating frequency is close to the system's resonance frequency.

DOI
10.15381/rif.v28i1.29411

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The problem of quantum measurement is analyzed, showing its limitations, when trying to reach objective reality starting from the conventional perspective that the universe is an isolated and self-contained system. The fundamental aspects on which the analysis of quantum measurement is based are the quantum superposition principle and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The result that the quantum superposition principle leads to is that the process of quantum measurement would never end when trying to reach objective reality. Using the wave packet model, the result that Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to is that the harmonic waves that make up the packet have a constant phase difference, which corresponds to a vibration or fraction of vibration, contradicting the nature of the field. quantum. By using Fourier analysis, it is deduced that the state of a physical system would be completely defined by a spectral distribution of vibration frequencies and, furthermore, it is deduced that every physical system would have a fundamental resonance frequency associated with the underlying vacuum of the system. Consequently, measuring devices designed based on the new proposal would have increasingly greater resolving power, as long as their operating frequency is close to the system's resonance frequency.
The accuracies of measurements of almost all fundamental physical constants have increased by factors of about 10 000 during the past 60 years. Although some of the improvements are due to greater care, most are due to new techniques based on quantum mechanics. Although the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle often limits measurement accuracies, in many cases the validity of quantum mechanics makes possible the vastly improved measurement accuracies. Seven quantum features that have a profound influence on the science of measurements are: (1) Existence of discrete quantum states of energy. (2) Energy conservation in transitions between two states. (3) Electromagnetic radiation of frequency v is quantized with energy hv per quantum. (4) The identity principle. (5) The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. (6) Addition of probability amplitudes (not probabilities). (7) Wave and coherent phase phenomena. Of these seven quantum features, only the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle limits the accuracy of measurements, and its affect is often negligibly small. The other six features make possible much more accurate measurements of quantum systems than with almost all classical systems. These effects are discussed and illustrated.
The accuracies of measurements of almost all fundamental physical constants have increased by factors of about 10,000 during the past 60 years. Although some of the improvements are due to greater care, most are due to new techniques based on quantum mechanics. In popular accounts of quantum mechanics, such great emphases is placed on the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle that it often appears that the primary effect of quantum mechanics should be to diminish measurement accuracy whereas in most cases it is the validity of quantum mechanics that makes possible the vastly improved measurement accuracies. Seven quantum features that have a profound influence on the science of measurements are: (1) Existence of discrete quantum states of energy Wi. (2) Energy conservation in transitions between two states. (3) Electromagnetic radiation of frequency ν is quantized with energy hν per quantum. (4) The identity principle. (5) The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. (6) Addition of probability amplitudes (not probabilities) so P=|ψ1 +ψ2 |2 ≠|ψ1|2 + |ψ2 |2. (7) Wave and coherent phase phenomena. Of these seven quantum features, only the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle limits the accuracy of measurements, and its affect is often negligibly small. The other six features make possible much more accurate measurements of quantum systems than with almost all classical systems and the identity principle provides meaning and significance to highly precise measurements with quantized systems. These effects are discussed and illustrated.
Title: Time cannot measure itself: Why the present is fundamentally unmeasurable and why all physical measurement is self-referential Author: Harald Fuehrer (Preprint for Zenodo) ⸻ Abstract This short conceptual paper demonstrates that every physical measurement contains an unavoidable temporal delay and therefore can never capture the actual present. It argues that the physical present the exact state of a system at the moment of its existence is in principle unmeasurable. Measurement devices and measurement processes necessarily introduce temporal latency, meaning that all measurements record only past states. Conclusion: Time cannot measure itself. All physical measurement is inherently self-referential and unable to access the fundamental Now-structure of reality. This has consequences for epistemology, metrology, quantum physics, and the interpretation of superposition. ⸻ 1. Introduction Physics implicitly assumes that measurements yield objective values of temporal states. This assumption is rarely questioned. Yet every measurement requires time in order to occur. This introduces a delay between the state that should be measured and the state that is actually registered. This work argues that this delay is not only technical but ontological. It cannot be removed, not even in principle. ⸻ 2. The measurement problem as a problem of time Every measurement is a process: • A signal must be generated. • It must travel through a medium. • It must be detected. • It must be processed. All steps require time. Therefore: The state we measure is always already in the past. This is not merely an engineering limitation. It is a structural feature of time. No measurement system can access the present because measurement itself forms a temporal chain. ⸻ 3. The unmeasurability of the present The present is the only temporal state that “is.” Measurement, however, is a process that consumes time. Therefore a measurement can never capture a state that is not at least some finite time in the past. Even with idealized instruments: • information transfer requires time, • processing requires time, • comparison with standards requires time. Thus the present remains epistemically inaccessible. ⸻ 4. The self-reference problem of time measurement If time is the framework that defines the order of measurement, then time cannot simultaneously be the object of measurement without creating a logical loop. The loop is: 1. Time defines the sequence of the measurement process. 2. Measurement attempts to define time. Therefore: Time measures itself. This creates a fundamental self-referential conflict that has not been made explicit in physics. ⸻ 5. Consequences for quantum physics Many quantum paradoxes especially superposition arise from the false assumption that one can access the present state of a system. But this is impossible. The so-called superposition is simply the set of epistemic possibilities that arises because we cannot access the present. When we measure, the spectrum of possibilities shrinks not because the system “collapses,” but because measurement yields data about the past. Uncertainty is not an ontological effect. It is a latency effect. ⸻ 6. Historical intuition Great physicists sensed this issue: • Einstein repeatedly noted that the present has no definable meaning in relativity. • Heisenberg realized that measurement always disturbs states without clearly explaining why. • Bohr emphasized that measurement and apparatus are inseparable. Yet none of them traced the issue to the unmeasurability of the present. ⸻ 7. Consequences From the above, the following must be concluded: 1. No measurement captures the real present state of any system. 2. All measurement values are records of the past. 3. Physics is epistemically limited by temporal latency. 4. Models must acknowledge self-referential structure. 5. Superposition is an artifact of temporal structure, not of reality. ⸻ 8. Conclusion The present cannot be measured because every measurement consumes time. Therefore time always measures itself indirectly through its own latency. This self-reference problem is fundamental and has not yet been formulated explicitly. The conclusion: Time cannot be measured objectively only its traces in the past can be. This insight should be explicitly incorporated into physical theory. ⸻ End of Paper (English ASCII Version)
In this paper, we discuss the importance of measurement in quantum mechanics and the so-called measurement problem. Any quantum system can be described as a linear combination of eigenstates of an operator representing a physical quantity; this means that the system can be in a superposition of states that corresponds to different eigenvalues, i.e., different physical outcomes, each one incompatible with the others. The measurement process converts a state of superposition (not macroscopically defined) in a well-defined state. We show that, if we describe the measurement by the standard laws of quantum mechanics, the system would preserve its state of superposition even on a macroscopic scale. Since this is not the case, we assume that a measurement does not obey to standard quantum mechanics, but to a new set of laws that form a “quantum measurement theory”.
While some of the deepest results in nature are those that give explicit bounds between important physical quantities, some of the most intriguing and celebrated of such bounds come from fields where there is still a great deal of disagreement and confusion regarding even the most fundamental aspects of the theories. For example, in quantum mechanics, there is still no complete consensus as to whether the limitations associated with Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle derive from an inherent randomness in physics, or rather from limitations in the measurement process itself, resulting from phenomena like back action. Likewise, the second law of thermodynamics makes a statement regarding the increase in entropy of closed systems, yet the theory itself has neither a universally-accepted definition of equilibrium, nor an adequate explanation of how a system with underlying microscopically Hamiltonian dynamics (reversible) settles into a fixed distribution. Motivated by these physical theories, and perhaps their inconsistencies, in this thesis we use dynamical systems theory to investigate how the very simplest of systems, even with no physical constraints, are characterized by bounds that give limits to the ability to make measurements on them. Using an existing interpretation, we start by examining how dissipative systems can be viewed as high-dimensional lossless systems, and how taking this view necessarily implies the existence of a noise process that results from the uncertainty in the initial system state. This fluctuation-dissipation result plays a central role in a measurement model that we examine, in particular describing how noise is inevitably injected into a system during a measurement, noise that can be viewed as originating either from the randomness of the many degrees of freedom of the measurement device, or of the environment. This noise constitutes one component of measurement back action, and ultimately imposes limits on measurement uncertainty. Depending on the assumptions we make about active devices, and their limitations, this back action can be offset to varying degrees via control. It turns out that using active devices to reduce measurement back action leads to estimation problems that have non-zero uncertainty lower bounds, the most interesting of which arise when the observed system is lossless. One such lower bound, a main contribution of this work, can be viewed as a classical version of a Heisenberg uncertainty relation between the system's position and momentum. We finally also revisit the murky question of how macroscopic dissipation appears from lossless dynamics, and propose alternative approaches for framing the question using existing systematic methods of model reduction.