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Register a new userThe Oxford Questions on the foundations of quantum physics
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Andrew Briggs Andrew Briggs
Publication date
2013
fields
Physics
and research's language is
English
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The twentieth century saw two fundamental revolutions in physics -- relativity and quantum. Daily use of these theories can numb the sense of wonder at their immense empirical success. Does their instrumental effectiveness stand on the rock of secure concepts or the sand of unresolved fundamentals? Does measuring a quantum system probe, or even create, reality, or merely change belief? Must relativity and quantum theory just co-exist or might we find a new theory which unifies the two? To bring such questions into sharper focus, we convened a conference on Quantum Physics and the Nature of Reality. Some issues remain as controversial as ever, but some are being nudged by theorys secret weapon of experiment.
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We discuss the role that intuitive theories of physics play in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. We compare and contrast naive physics with quantum mechanics and argue that quantum mechanics is not just hard to understand but that it is difficult to believe, often appearing magical in nature. Quantum mechanics is often discussed in the context of quantum weirdness and quantum entanglement is known as spooky action at a distance. This spookiness is more than just because quantum mechanics doesnt match everyday experience; it ruffles the feathers of our naive physics cognitive module. In Everetts many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, we preserve a form of deterministic thinking that can alleviate some of the perceived weirdness inherent in other interpretations of quantum mechanics, at the cost of having the universe split into parallel worlds at every quantum measurement. By examining the role cognitive modules play in interpreting quantum mechanics, we conclude that the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics involves a cognitive bias not seen in the Copenhagen interpretation.
The quantum Liouville equation, which describes the phase space dynamics of a quantum system of fermions, is analyzed from statistical point of view as a particular example of the Kramers-Moyal expansion. Quantum mechanics is extended to the relativistic domain by generalizing the Wigner-Moyal equation. Thus, an expression is derived for the relativistic mass in the Wigner quantum phase space presentation. The diffusion with an imaginary diffusion coefficient is also discussed. An imaginary stochastic process is proposed as the origin of quantum mechanics.
We state a number of related questions on the structure of perfect matchings. Those questions are inspired by and directly connected to Quantum Physics. In particular, they concern the constructability of general quantum states using modern photonic technology. For that we introduce a new concept, denoted as inherited vertex coloring. It is a vertex coloring for every perfect matching. The colors are inherited from the color of the incident edge for each perfect matching. First, we formulate the concepts and questions in pure graph-theoretical language, and finally we explain the physical context of every mathematical object that we use. Importantly, every progress towards answering these questions can directly be translated into new understanding in quantum physics.
In this comment we critically review an argument against the existence of objective physical outcomes, recently proposed by R. Healey [Foundations of Physics, 48(11), 1568-1589]. We show that his gedankenexperiment, based on a combination of Wigners friend scenarios and Bells inequalities, suffers from the main criticism, that the computed correlation functions entering the Bells inequality are in principle experimentally inaccessible, and hence the authors claim is not verifiable. We discuss perspectives for fixing that by adapting the proposed protocol and show that this, however, makes Healeys argument virtually equivalent to other previous, similar proposals that he explicitly criticises.
With the rapid development of quantum technology, one of the leading applications is the simulation of chemistry. Interestingly, even before full scale quantum computers are available, quantum computer science has exhibited a remarkable string of results that directly impact what is possible in chemical simulation with any computer. Some of these results even impact our understanding of chemistry in the real world. In this perspective, we take the position that direct chemical simulation is best understood as a digital experiment. While on one hand this clarifies the power of quantum computers to extend our reach, it also shows us the limitations of taking such an approach too directly. Leveraging results that quantum computers cannot outpace the physical world, we build to the controversial stance that some chemical problems are best viewed as problems for which no algorithm can deliver their solution in general, known in computer science as undecidable problems. This has implications for the predictive power of thermodynamic models and topics like the ergodic hypothesis. However, we argue that this perspective is not defeatist, but rather helps shed light on the success of existing chemical models like transition state theory, molecular orbital theory, and thermodynamics as models that benefit from data. We contextualize recent results showing that data-augmented models are more powerful rote simulation. These results help us appreciate the success of traditional chemical theory and anticipate new models learned from experimental data. Not only can quantum computers provide data for such models, but they can extend the class and power of models that utilize data in fundamental ways. These discussions culminate in speculation on new ways for quantum computing and chemistry to interact and our perspective on the eventual roles of quantum computers in the future of chemistry.
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