Http:www.univie.ac.at/qfp/publications3/pdffiles/1999-10.pdf real?

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around the validity and implications of a specific paper by Anton Zeilinger regarding foundational principles in quantum mechanics, particularly focusing on the concept of information and entanglement. Participants explore the paper's rigor, its relation to existing theories, and the credibility of the author within the quantum information community.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation

Main Points Raised

  • One participant expresses skepticism about the paper's authenticity and suggests it may be a fraud aimed at gaining popularity, questioning the simplicity of its arguments.
  • Another participant counters that Anton Zeilinger's reputation in the quantum information community makes it unlikely for the paper to be fraudulent.
  • There is a discussion about the ambiguity of the term "real" in quantum mechanics, with a participant affirming the legitimacy of both Zeilinger and Quantum Information Theory.
  • A participant shares critical observations regarding Zeilinger's proposals, providing a link to a related paper on arXiv.org.
  • Another participant clarifies that their inquiry was specifically about the original paper and not about the scientific bases of Zeilinger's work.
  • One participant draws a parallel between Zeilinger's work and von Weizsäcker's ur-theory, questioning the lack of citation by Zeilinger.
  • A later reply suggests that the axiom proposed in the paper has been rigorously applied to derive quantum mechanics, discussing the implications for the measurement problem and decoherence.
  • This participant also critiques the original paper's assumptions about mixed states and proposes an alternative interpretation that they find clearer.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants express a range of views, with some supporting Zeilinger's credibility and others questioning the paper's rigor and its foundational claims. The discussion remains unresolved, with multiple competing perspectives on the validity of the paper and its implications for quantum mechanics.

Contextual Notes

Participants reference various theories and papers, indicating a complex interplay of ideas regarding quantum mechanics, but there are no settled conclusions about the validity of Zeilinger's paper or its foundational principles.

StarsRuler
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http://www.univie.ac.at/qfp/publications3/pdffiles/1999-10.pdf propose a foundational principle for quantum mechanics, it is intuitively irrefutable about information, but only deduce the entanglament between states and not a complete set of postulates of QM. Do you know a paper when the author deduce it?? I am not very convinced that it doesn´t a fraud to gain popularity, his simplyness must have gave it more repercusion don´t you think??
 
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I don't know of any paper with more rigor (because I didn't look for it), but I would just say that it's very unlikely to be a fraud because Anton Zeilinger is one of the most well respected persons in the quantum information community (and he was very well known long before 1999, so he would not need fraud to gain popularity).
 
“Real” could sometimes turn out to be a ‘niggling’ word in QM... generating substantial discussions, however Professor Anton Zeilinger is very real and so is Quantum Information Theory. :smile:

Quantum Information & the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DiEl7msEZc


Here are some papers on arXiv.org by Zeilinger regarding Quantum Information.

On the Quantiki portal you can find a lot more.
 
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Thanks for the link, but it is not about the Zeilinger paper I refer. I don´t know if his scientific bases are erroneous, my question was only about the article I name at the start of the post. Interesting anyway
 
This sounds somewhat the old ur-theory of von Weitzsaecker. I wonder why Zeilinger doesn't cite it.
 
DrDu said:
This sounds somewhat the old ur-theory of von Weitzsaecker. I wonder why Zeilinger doesn't cite it.
He mentions von Weitzsaecker somewhere, iirc, possibly in another paper. I looked at ur-theory ages ago as it seemed elegant, but after studying the detail I didn't think it worth pursuing, at least not in form it was at that time. Maybe Zeilinger's extended treatment can make it more attractive.
 
Yep - that proposition has been more rigorously put to use to derive QM along with some other reasonable assumptions:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0911.0695v1.pdf

Its my favorite route to QM these days.

Although I would not express the axiom as 'All systems with information carrying capacity of one bit are equivalent' - but rather all systems that can observationally have two outcomes are equivalent or even simpler state systems that are obsessionally the same are equivalent without the one bit thing - there is nothing special about one bit except its the simplest assumption you need to make.

The importance of this axiom as far as the measurement problem is concerned is related to decoherence. What decoherence does is transform a pure state into an improper mixed state. If it was a proper mixed state then the system is in that state prior to observation - measurement problem solved. But an improper mixed state is only observationally the same as a proper mixed state so its not forced on you to interpret it that way. But if all systems that are observationally equivalent are equivalent then the improper mixed state is equivalent to a proper mixed state - measurement problem solved.

Just for the heck of it I went through that paper replacing their axiom with mine and it actually becomes a bit clearer what's going on. For example, on page 4, where it defines mixed and pure states, it talks about 'the mixed state p generated by preparing state p1 with probability y and p2 with probability 1 − y, is p = yp1 + (1 − y)p2.' And if you go through its logic it assumes all mixed states are like that ie if it observationally behaves like that then it is assumed to be like that. This is the exact assumption made in interpreting an improper mixed state as a proper mixed state ie as a state that has been prepared by having the state randomly selected and presented for observation.

Thanks
Bill
 

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