- #316
DarMM
Science Advisor
Gold Member
- 2,370
- 1,407
Well let's make it simpler. You understand the sense in which ##E## is taken to describe an actual propogating physical system?
Yes.DarMM said:Well let's make it simpler. You understand the sense in which ##E## is taken to describe an actual propogating physical system?
That's is what I thought initially. But it makes no sense to me to say that ##\psi## an actual propagating physical system. Because the domain on which it is defined is not space-time. If you have more than two particles how do you makes sense of it?DarMM said:Then saying ##\psi## is real is a shorthand for saying that ##\psi## is similarly describing an actual propogating physical system.
As opposed to ##\psi## just describing the probabilities of various outcomes.
Oh I see. Yes, you run into problems like this once you say ##\psi## is real. It depends on the interpretation how exactly you get out of this. Some versions of MWI for example say that spacetime is simply an illusion caused by decoherence and only ##\psi## exists. I'm sure proponents of the various views can give details.martinbn said:That's is what I thought initially. But it makes no sense to me to say that ##\psi## an actual propagating physical system. Because the domain on which it is defined is not space-time. If you have more than two particles how do you makes sense of it?
DarMM said:I think it is relevant. The usual understanding is that if the cut is subjective then you get contradictions from extended Wigner's Friend scenarios. If the cut is objective then you have Many-Worlds, just we also have a non-relativistic covariant degree of freedom defined over all of space which specifies where the worlds "stop". So it's either inconsistent or MWI + nonlocal degree of freedom.
DarMM said:There are other problems with textbook QM + ##\psi## directly describing a physical degree of freedom (Dirac-Von Neumann) unlike textbook QM + ##\psi## as a book keeping device for probabilities (Copenhagen). It's not really an interpretation anybody in Foundations holds to anymore.
To define causality seems too complex for a forum post. All you can expect is some short, sloppy description of the most important aspects.martinbn said:I think I am not asking my question clearly. I just want to know the definitions of the two different causalities that you use. Einstein causality and signal causality. What has to be concluded by Bell's theorem is a separate question.
DarMM said:Oh certainly it is discussed in Spekkens paper there, I don't deny that. However those papers pre-date the extended Wigner's friend cases. It's also not an interpretation that is really held by anybody.
No, for example you might leave open that Bohmian Mechanics and MWI are true.atyy said:Well, what to me seems unintuitive about what you are saying is that you seem to be saying that the minimal interpretation requires one to believe that psi is not real, whereas typically we say that the minimal interpretation is agnostic.
They make sense, they just don't invalidate Copenhagen. ##\psi## not being real is a fundamental part of the Copenhagen view in any exposition of it I've read. Either in the writings of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Peierls or more modern papers or courses like Matt Leifer's.atyy said:Also, I don't understand why the extended Wigner friend scenarios have anything to do with it. I thought we agreed the papers don't make sense from a Copenhagen viewpoint. And from a Copenhagen viewpoint, it doesn't seem as if one has to to be committed anyway to the reality or non-reality of the wave function
In principle, indeed, I would not completely exclude the possibility that some empirical facts could influence the laws of reasoning.Tendex said:I agree with this provided one leaves room for the possibility that the current formal mathematical logic can be extended to a more general one for physical theories if at some point experiments lend themselves to a more comprehensive form of scientific theory. This is of course not my idea but was contemplated by people like Poincaré, Weyl and Brouwer.
DarMM said:No, for example you might leave open that Bohmian Mechanics and MWI are true.
DarMM said:They make sense, they just don't invalidate Copenhagen. ##\psi## not being real is a fundamental part of the Copenhagen view in any exposition of it I've read. Either in the writings of Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Peierls or more modern papers or courses like Matt Leifer's.
I'm not sure I fully follow, but the wavefunction of minimal QM comes from the Bohmian epistemic ##\psi## not the fundamental ##\Psi## of Bohmian Mechanics. This distinction matters in Frauchiger-Renner type scenarios.atyy said:Well, perhaps we use the word interpretation in a different way. How about minimal formalism instead of minimal interpretation. To me, I would say that the minimal formalism emerges from BM, and that within the minimal formalism it is consistent to treat the wave function as real, but complete within the formalism - although it is incomplete from the point of BM. It is complete in the sense of completeness for the purpose of making predictions of the probabilities of measurement outcomes.
I don't agree with this. Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Peierls and many others explicitly state the wave-function is just a catalogue of probabilities. More modern Copenhagen people say this. It's what's said about Copenhagen in the Perimeter Institute's Quantum Foundations courses no matter who teaches it each year.atyy said:I would more typically say that there is neither a commitment to the wave function being real or not real
I'm also lost. Now the apparently clear notion of "physical degree of freedom" is also blurred by philsophical unclear redefinitions.martinbn said:I am guessing I don't know what degree of freedom is. It is intuitive in mechanics. A point in the plane has two degrees of freedom. In electrodynamics the electric field has infinitely many degrees of freedom. But wouldn't have thought that the field itself is called a degree of freedom.
DarMM said:Why a physical "wave" would obey de Finetti's theorem I find hard to understand.
This result fits with Wheeler’s thesis that the universe lacks of laws for the outcomes of some experiments and with Born’s intuition that quantum theory is a consequence of the non-existence of ‘conditions for a causal evolution’
Basically they mean it's like a field degree of freedom on a higher dimensional space (configuration space). As you said, yes this is basically what Schrodinger originally thought and yes like you I have literally no idea what it could mean in QFT.vanhees71 said:I'm also lost. Now the apparently clear notion of "physical degree of freedom" is also blurred by philsophical unclear redefinitions.
In physics there are two kinds of "degrees of freedom", applying either to point-particle mechanics, where it is described as a finite number of independent configuration-space variables ##q^k## with ##k \in \{1,\ldots f \}##, or field-degrees of freedom. E.g., the electromagnetic field is described by 6 field-degrees of freedom, e.g., the 3 electric and the 3 magnetic field components.
Now they start to claim that the quantum mechanical wave function ##\psi## is a "degree of freedom". What should that mean?
DarMM said:I'm not sure I fully follow, but the wavefunction of minimal QM comes from the Bohmian epistemic ##\psi## not the fundamental ##\Psi## of Bohmian Mechanics. This distinction matters in Frauchiger-Renner type scenarios.
DarMM said:I don't agree with this. Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Peierls and many others explicitly state the wave-function is just a catalogue of probabilities. More modern Copenhagen people say this. It's what's said about Copenhagen in the Perimeter Institute's Quantum Foundations courses no matter who teaches it each year.
It's not so much named after them to indicate it's their view, but that it's what one might naively think from reading the axioms that first appear in their texts. von Neumann didn't himself think of ##\psi## as an actual real field and Dirac is fairly explicit in thinking ##\psi## is just a collection of probabilities.atyy said:Now I doubt that Dirac and von Neumann were any less sophisticated than Bohr or Peierls
A short reminder. Suppose that a closed system contains two particles. Then its wave function is ##\Psi({\bf x}_1,{\bf x}_2,t)## and always satisfies the Schrodinger equation. The wave function of the open subsystem, e.g. the wave function of the first particle, is thenatyy said:Ah that is an interesting point. I have never understood what the proper classification of the various Bohmian psis are. @Demystifier has explained this to me several times, but I have not understood it well enough to have the answer off the top of my head. I presume in this case you don't mean that the Bohmian epistemic psi is "psi-epistemic" in the Harrigan and Spekkens sense?
Suppose that ##\mathbf{X}_2## is not a position of a single microscopic particle, but a collective position of a macroscopic pointer in the measuring apparatus. In other words, suppose that ##\mathbf{X}_2## is a position that we can directly perceive (a perceptible, in the language on my paper). Then ##\psi(\mathbf{x}_1,t)## is the wave function that we associate with the first particle when we know the position of the pointer. This is what, in standard QM, corresponds to the update of wave function (which some people like to call "collapse", but we both agree that there is no true collapse) given a knowledge provided by the measuring apparatus. In this way, Bohmian mechanics explains what standard QM takes for granted, namely that a macroscopic pointer has a position and that knowledge of this position can be used to update the wave function.vanhees71 said:What's the physical meaning of ##\psi(\mathbf{x}_1,t)## then?
One justification is the fact that in this way one can reproduce the standard textbook "collapse" rule (which correctly predicts probabilities of subsequent measurements), without having an actual collapse. It is explained in more detail in the book on Bohmian mechanics by Durr et al that you read.vanhees71 said:Interesting, and what's the formal justification for this interpretation?
And what is the particle's wave function before the measurement?Demystifier said:Suppose that ##\mathbf{X}_2## is not a position of a single microscopic particle, but a collective position of a macroscopic pointer in the measuring apparatus. In other words, suppose that ##\mathbf{X}_2## is a position that we can directly perceive (a perceptible, in the language on my paper). Then ##\psi(\mathbf{x}_1,t)## is the wave function that we associate with the first particle when we know the position of the pointer. This is what, in standard QM, corresponds to the update of wave function (which some people like to call "collapse", but we both agree that there is no true collapse) given a knowledge provided by the measuring apparatus. In this way, Bohmian mechanics explains what standard QM takes for granted, namely that a macroscopic pointer has a position and that knowledge of this position can be used to update the wave function.
Before the measurement we usually assume that there is no entanglement, in which case there is no important difference between ##\Psi## and ##\psi##. Does it answer your question?A. Neumaier said:And what is the particle's wave function before the measurement?
One cannot assume this when one only has the Bohmian dynamics, unless one assumes that the universe was created at the time of the preparation of the experiment. This can be seen by running the Bohmian mechanics backwards from your assumed condition - it will be unentangled only for an instant.Demystifier said:Before the measurement we usually assume that there is no entanglement, in which case there is no important difference between ##\Psi## and ##\psi##. Does it answer your question?
Yes, this is permitted in interpretations that do not claim to derive their dynamics from the dynamics of a bigger system that also involves the preparation and measurement procedure. But Bohmian mechanics is supposed to derive everything from a deterministic dynamics of the universe, hence has no room for additional assumptions unless these can be proved from the deterministic model.vanhees71 said:Usually you assume that before the measurement, i.e., the interaction between the measured system and the measurement device these are unentangled, which makes sense since the preparation of the system and the device before the measurement should be independent to have a defined distinction between them and a well-defined measurement to begin with.
One can assume this, of course only in a certain approximative sense. The other important concept in Bohmian mechanics that you are missing is the effective wave function, which explains why most of the entanglement that the subsystem has with the rest of the universe can be neglected.A. Neumaier said:One cannot assume this when one only has the Bohmian dynamics, unless one assumes that the universe was created at the time of the preparation of the experiment.
They can be proved, but perhaps not rigorously proved as you would like. See https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0308039A. Neumaier said:hence has no room for additional assumptions unless these can be proved from the deterministic model.
But you need to show why, in some approximate sense, this assumption is justified by the deterministic theory!Demystifier said:One can assume this, of course only in a certain approximative sense.
No. my question was aimed at this, and you had answered with separability. I don't see how the deterministic theory implies separability for the effective wave function.Demystifier said:The other important concept in Bohmian mechanics that you are missing is the effective wave function, which explains why most of the entanglement that the subsystem has with the rest of the universe can be neglected.
(5.6) assumes that the universal wave function factorizes, an assumption completely unstable under small temporal changes, hence not warranted. They mention this after (5.11); it is strange that they discuss this unrealistic case at all. After (5.8), another unwarranted assumption is made ''that the interaction between the x-system and its environment can be ignored''. But the bigger a system the more entangled it is with the remainder of the universe! And you invoked a big system (consisting of a measured system and its measuring device)!Demystifier said:They can be proved, but perhaps not rigorously proved as you would like. See https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0308039
especially Sec. 5.
I think it's (non-rigorously) proved from dynamics in the literature on decoherence theory. See e.g. the book by Schlosshauer, Sec. 2.8.4.A. Neumaier said:That the form (5.15) ultimately assumed is typical for is an unproved assumption that I find quite unlikely to be derivable from the dynamics.
The subsection ''Selection of Quasiclassical Properties''? This is 2 1/2 pages of prose arguing for preferred emerging pointer states in traditional quantum mechanics (not Bohmian mechanics). I don't see there anything related to (5.15).Demystifier said:I think it's (non-rigorously) proved from dynamics in the literature on decoherence theory. See e.g. the book by Schlosshauer, Sec. 2.8.4.A. Neumaier said:That the form (5.15) ultimately assumed is typical is an unproved assumption that I find quite unlikely to be derivable from the dynamics.
This prose contains references to the literature with more details. The purpose of prose in physics, of course, is not to "prove" something but to give intuitive undertstanding.A. Neumaier said:The subsection ''Selection of Quasiclassical Properties''? This is 2 1/2 pages of prose
Exactly! The questions you are asking are not related exclusively to Bohmian mechanics. They are equally related to many worlds, decoherence, von Neumann measurement theory, and all related approaches.A. Neumaier said:arguing for preferred emerging pointer states in traditional quantum mechanics (not Bohmian mechanics).
If you can read between the lines, you can find it in item 1 at page 84.A. Neumaier said:I don't see there anything related to (5.15).
In that discussion before, it seems that you missed my post #70, where I explained mathematically why the ideas work even without the nondemolition assumption.A. Neumaier said:Checking back it seems that whatever is done in Section 2.8 is based on the nondemolition assumption - (2.84) on p. 90 - which we had discussed before as being a nontypical special case.
DarMM said:Basically they mean it's like a field degree of freedom on a higher dimensional space (configuration space). As you said, yes this is basically what Schrodinger originally thought and yes like you I have literally no idea what it could mean in QFT.