On Formalisms and Interpretations

One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism $\textit{versus}$ interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there are actually two $\textit{inequivalent}$ quantum...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Veronika Baumann, Stefan Wolf
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Verein zur Förderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften 2018-10-01
Series:Quantum
Online Access:https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2018-10-15-99/pdf/
Description
Summary:One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism $\textit{versus}$ interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there are actually two $\textit{inequivalent}$ quantum formalisms, namely the relative-state formalism and the standard formalism with the Born and measurement-update rules. We further propose a different probability rule for the relative-state formalism and discuss how Wigner's-friend-type experiments could show the inequivalence with the standard formalism. The feasibility in principle of such experiments, however, remains an open question.
ISSN:2521-327X