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arXiv:cond-mat/0207463

Incomplete information and correlated electrons

Qiuping Alexandre Wang

Published Jul 18, 2002• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Although Gödel's incompleteness theorem made mathematician recognize that no axiomatic system could completely prove its correctness and that there is an eternal hole between our knowledge and the world, physicists so far continue to work on the approaches based on the hypothesis to completely or approximately know the systems of interest. In this paper, however, I review the recent development of a different approach, a statistical theory based upon the notion of incomplete information. This consideration leads to generalized statistical mechanics characterized by an incompleteness parameter which equals unity when information is complete. The mathematical and physical bases of the information incompleteness are discussed. The application of the concomitant incomplete quantum distribution to correlated electron systems is reviewed.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0207463

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Although Gödel's incompleteness theorem made mathematician recognize that no axiomatic system could completely prove its correctness and that there is an eternal hole between our knowledge and the world, physicists so far continue to work on the approaches based on the hypothesis to completely or approximately know the systems of interest. In this paper, however, I review the recent development of a different approach, a statistical theory based upon the notion of incomplete information. This consideration leads to generalized statistical mechanics characterized by an incompleteness parameter which equals unity when information is complete. The mathematical and physical bases of the information incompleteness are discussed. The application of the concomitant incomplete quantum distribution to correlated electron systems is reviewed.
Abstract The reconstruction of quantum physics has been connected with the interpretation of the quantum formalism, and has continued to be so with the recent deeper consideration of the relation of information to quantum states and processes. This recent form of reconstruction has mainly involved conceiving quantum theory on the basis of informational principles, providing new perspectives on physical correlations and entanglement that can be used to encode information. By contrast to the traditional, interpretational approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics, which attempts directly to establish the meaning of the elements of the theory and often touches on metaphysical issues, the newer, more purely reconstructive approach sometimes defers this task, focusing instead on the mathematical derivation of the theoretical apparatus from simple principles or axioms. In its most pure form, this sort of theory reconstruction is fundamentally the mathematical derivation of the elements of theory from explicitly presented, often operational principles involving a minimum of extra‐mathematical content. Here, a representative series of specifically information‐based treatments—from partial reconstructions that make connections with information to rigorous axiomatizations, including those involving the theories of generalized probability and abstract systems—is reviewed.
We show how Gödel's first incompleteness theorem has an analog in quantum theory. Gödel's theorem implies endless opportunities for appending axioms to arithmetic, implicitly showing a role for an agent, namely an agent that asserts an axiom. There is an analog of this theorem in physics, to do with the set of explanations of given evidence. We prove that the set of explanations of given evidence is uncountably infinite, thereby showing how contact between theory and experiment depends on activity beyond computation and measurement -- physical activity characterized as agency.
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The paper discusses the physical groundlessness of the models used for the derivation of canonical distribution and provides the experimental data demonstrating the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. The possibility of using statistical ensembles is presented as a consequence of the existence of probabilistic processes which are not accounted for by quantum mechanics. The paper provides a new analytical derivation of canonical distribution for macrosystems which takes into account subquantum processes. The paper discusses the possibility of the experimental study of a probability which is beyond quantum mechanics.