mike1000
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mikeyork said:Your problem, mike1000, as people have tried to explain to you several times, is that you don't adequately distinguish states from eigenstates or your chosen observational basis from any other basis. The number of states n you keep referring to is the number of eigenstates not the number of possible states. (And as long as you insist on talking about "elements" rather than eigenstates you'll probably stay confused about this. There is a reason for the language we use in QM.) You get only n possible outcomes only if that basis is the chosen basis for your observation. If you have a superposition in basis A, then yes, you'll have n possibilities if your observation basis is A. If your observation basis is B, then you'll have another maximum n independent possible measurement results. That means you have up to 2n possible states but only n eigenstates in any given basis. In general you can add another n eigenstates for every possible basis you might choose to make your measurement and the result is an infinite number of states in an n-dimensional Hilbert space. It is only in a specific basis that the number of possible results is n.
The number n, I have been referring to, represents the number of possible outcomes. If you go back and read my posts you will see that I have always referred to it as the number of possible outcomes, not the number of states. The number of possible outcomes is fixed to whatever the number of eigenvalues for the operator happen to be. The number of states is infinite.
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