The Bayesian approach to quantum mechanics of Caves, Fuchs and Schack is presented. Its conjunction of realism about physics along with anti-realism about much of the structure of quantum theory is elaborated; and the position defended from common objections: that it is solipsist; that it is too instrumentalist; that it cannot deal with Wigner's friend scenarios. Three more substantive problems are raised: Can a reasonable ontology be found for the approach? Can it account for explanation in quantum theory? Are subjective probabilities on their own adequate in the quantum domain? The first question is answered in the affirmative, drawing on elements from Nancy Cartwright's philosophy of science. The second two are not: it is argued that these present outstanding difficulties for the project. A quantum Bayesian version of Moore's paradox is developed to illustrate difficulties with the subjectivist account of pure state assignments.
The author summarizes the Quantum Bayesian viewpoint of quantum mechanics, developed originally by C. M. Caves, R. Schack, and himself. It is a view crucially dependent upon the tools of quantum information theory. Work at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics continues the development and is focused on the hard technical problem of a finding a good representation of quantum mechanics purely in terms of probabilities, without amplitudes or Hilbert-space operators. The best candidate representation involves a mysterious entity called a symmetric informationally complete quantum measur…
Quantum Bayesianism ("QBism") has been put forward as an approach to quantum theory that avoids foundational problems by altogether disavowing the objective existence of quantum states. It is shown that QBism suffers its own versions of the familiar foundational problems, and that these QBist versions are illuminating not just for QBism, but for more traditional foundational approaches as well.
The lately developed part of Quantum Bayesianism named QBism has been proclaimed by its authors a powerful interpretation of Quantum Physics. This article presents analysis of some aspects of QBism. The considered examples show inconsistencies in some basic statements of the discussed interpretation. In particular, the main quantum mechanical conundrum of measurement and the observer is, contrary to the claims, not resolved within the framework of QBism. The conclusion is made that the basic tenets of QBism as applied in Physics are unsubstantiated.
This article summarizes the Quantum Bayesian point of view of quantum mechanics, with special emphasis on the view's outer edges---dubbed QBism. QBism has its roots in personalist Bayesian probability theory, is crucially dependent upon the tools of quantum information theory, and most recently, has set out to investigate whether the physical world might be of a type sketched by some false-started philosophies of 100 years ago (pragmatism, pluralism, nonreductionism, and meliorism). Beyond conceptual issues, work at Perimeter Institute is focused on the hard technical problem of finding a good…
Bohmian mechanics (BM) is a popular interpretation of quantum mechanics in which particles have real positions. The velocity of a point x in configuration space is defined as the standard probability current j(x) divided by the probability density P(x). However, this ``standard'' j is in fact only one of infinitely many that transform correctly and satisfy \dot P + \del . j=0. In this article I show that there is a unique j that can be determined experimentally as a weak value using techniques that would make sense to a classical physicist. Moreover, this operationally defined j equals the sta…
Motivated by Quantum Bayesianism I give background for a general epistemic approach to quantum mechanics, where complementarity and symmetry are the only essential features. A general definition of a symmetric epistemic setting is introduced, and for this setting the basic Hilbert space formalism is arrived at under certain technical assumptions. Other aspects of ordinary quantum mechanics will be developed from the same basis elsewhere.
We show that mere observation of a quantum system can turn its dynamics from a very simple one into a universal quantum computation. This effect, which occurs if the system is regularly observed at short time intervals, can be rephrased as a modern version of Plato's Cave allegory. More precisely, while in the original version of the myth, the reality perceived within the Cave is described by the projected shadows of some more fundamental dynamics which is intrinsically more complex, we found that in the quantum world the situation changes drastically as the "projected" reality perceived throu…
In QBism (or Quantum Bayesianism) a quantum state does not represent an element of physical reality but an agent's personal probability assignments, reflecting his subjective degrees of belief about the future content of his experience. In this paper, we contrast QBism with hidden-variable accounts of quantum mechanics and show the sense in which QBism explains quantum correlations. QBism's agent-centered worldview can be seen as a development of ideas expressed in Schrödinger's essay "Nature and the Greeks".
Wave-packet interference is investigated within the complex quantum Hamilton-Jacobi formalism using a hydrodynamic description. Quantum interference leads to the formation of the topological structure of quantum caves in space-time Argand plots. These caves consist of the vortical and stagnation tubes originating from the isosurfaces of the amplitude of the wave function and its first derivative. Complex quantum trajectories display counterclockwise helical wrapping around the stagnation tubes and hyperbolic deflection near the vortical tubes. The string of alternating stagnation and vortical …
The interpretation of quantum mechanics known as QBism developed out of efforts to understand the probabilities arising in quantum physics as Bayesian in character. But this development was neither easy nor without casualties. Many ideas voiced, and even committed to print, during earlier stages of Quantum Bayesianism turn out to be quite fallacious when seen from the vantage point of QBism.
In the quantum-Bayesian approach to quantum foundations, a quantum state is viewed as an expression of an agent's personalist Bayesian degrees of belief, or probabilities, concerning the results of measurements. These probabilities obey the usual probability rules as required by Dutch-book coherence, but quantum mechanics imposes additional constraints upon them. In this paper, we explore the question of deriving the structure of quantum-state space from a set of assumptions in the spirit of quantum Bayesianism. The starting point is the representation of quantum states induced by a symmetric …
Quantum Bayesianism, or QBism, is a recent development of the epistemic view of quantum states, according to which the state vector represents knowledge about a quantum system, rather than the true state of the system. QBism explicitly adopts the subjective view of probability, wherein probability assignments express an agent's personal degrees of belief about an event. QBists claim that most if not all conceptual problems of quantum mechanics vanish if we simply take a proper epistemic and probabilistic perspective. Although this judgement is largely subjective and logically consistent, I exp…
Fuchs and Peres (2000) claimed that standard Quantum Mechanics needs no interpretation. In this essay, I show the flaws of the arguments presented in support to this thesis. Specifically, it will be claimed that the authors conflate QM with Quantum Bayesianism (QBism) - the most prominent subjective formulation of quantum theory; thus, they endorse a specific interpretation of the quantum formalism. Secondly, I will explain the main reasons for which QBism should not be considered a physical theory, being it concerned exclusively with agents' beliefs and silent about the physics of the quantum…
This paper offers a critique of the Bayesian interpretation of quantum mechanics with particular focus on a paper by Caves, Fuchs, and Schack containing a critique of the "objective preparations view" or OPV. It also aims to carry the discussion beyond the hardened positions of Bayesians and proponents of the OPV. Several claims made by Caves et al. are rebutted, including the claim that different pure states may legitimately be assigned to the same system at the same time, and the claim that the quantum nature of a preparation device cannot legitimately be ignored. Both Bayesians and proponen…
We discuss how the apparently objective probabilities predicted by quantum mechanics can be treated in the framework of Bayesian probability theory, in which all probabilities are subjective. Our results are in accord with earlier work by Caves, Fuchs, and Schack, but our approach and emphasis are different. We also discuss the problem of choosing a noninformative prior for a density matrix.
When considering the effect of quantum noise (QN) in a phase-insensitive linear amplifier or attenuator, it is customary to use the single channel Caves model (SC-CM). Although this model is valid in simple situations, such as the presence of a beam splitter, it is not necessarily valid when a system with many degrees of freedom is involved. In order to address this issue, we consider in this paper various atomic transitions corresponding to amplification or attenuation using the master-equation- (ME-) based approach to model the QN and to compare the results with the SC-CM. For a four-level s…
QBism is a recently developed version of Quantum Bayesianism. QBists think that the primitive concept of experience is the central subject of science. QBism refuses the idea that the quantum state of a system is an objective description of this system. It is a tool for assigning a subjective probability to the agent's future experience. So quantum mechanics does not directly say something about the "external world". A measurement (in the usual sense) is just a special case of what QBism calls experience and this is any action done by any agent on her external world. The result of the measureme…
It has been recently pointed out by Caves, Fuchs, and Rungta that real quantum mechanics (that is, quantum mechanics defined over real vector spaces provides an interesting foil theory whose study may shed some light on just which particular aspects of quantum entanglement are unique to standard quantum theory, and which ones are more generic over other physical theories endowed with this phenomenon. Following this work, we discuss some entanglement properties of two-rebits systems, making a comparison with the basic properties of two-qubits systems, i.e., the ones described by standard comple…
This paper investigates the relationship between subsystems and time in a closed nonrelativistic system of interacting bosons and fermions. It is possible to write any state vector in such a system as an unentangled tensor product of subsystem vectors, and to do so in infinitely many ways. This requires the superposition of different numbers of particles, but the theory can describe in full the equivalence relation that leads to a particle-number superselection rule in conventionally defined subsystems. Time is defined as a functional of subsystem changes, thus eliminating the need for any ref…
We show that the class of quantum baker's maps defined by Schack and Caves have the proper classical limit provided the number of momentum bits approaches infinity. This is done by deriving a semi-classical approximation to the coherent-state propagator.
We discuss foundational issues of quantum information biology (QIB) -- one of the most successful applications of the quantum formalism outside of physics. QIB provides a multi-scale model of information processing in bio-systems: from proteins and cells to cognitive and social systems. This theory has to be sharply distinguished from "traditional quantum biophysics". The latter is about quantum bio-physical processes, e.g., in cells or brains. QIB models the dynamics of information states of bio-systems. It is based on the quantum-like paradigm: complex bio-systems process information in acco…
Quantum baker`s map is a model of chaotic system. We study quantum dynamics for the quantum baker's map. We use the Schack and Caves symbolic description of the quantum baker`s map. We find an exact expression for the expectation value of the time dependent position operator. A relation between quantum and classical trajectories is investigated. Breakdown of the quantum-classical correspondence at the logarithmic timescale is rigorously established.
The attainability of the quantum Cramér-Rao bound [QCR], the ultimate limit in the precision of the estimation of a physical parameter, requires the saturation of the quantum information bound [QIB]. This occurs when the Fisher information associated to a given measurement on the quantum state of a system which encodes the information about the parameter coincides with the quantum Fisher information associated to that quantum state. Braunstein and Caves [PRL {\bf 72}, 3439 (1994)] have shown that the QIB can always be achieved via a projective measurement in the eigenvectors basis of an observ…
I utilize the Caves-Milburn model for continuous position measurements to formulate a broadband version of the Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) for monitoring the position of a free mass, and illustrate the use of Kalman filtering to recover the SQL for estimating a weak classical force that acts on a quantum-mechanical test particle under continuous observation. These derivations are intended to clarify the interpretation of SQL's in the context of continuous quantum measurement.
The equivalence postulate approach to quantum mechanics aims to formulate quantum mechanics from a fundamental geometrical principle. Underlying the formulation there exists a basic cocycle condition which is invariant under $D$--dimensional Möbius transformations with respect to the Euclidean or Minkowski metrics. The invariance under global Möbius transformations implies that spatial space is compact. Furthermore, it implies energy quantisation and undefinability of quantum trajectories without assuming any prior interpretation of the wave function. The approach may be viewed as conventional…
Within the last decade, experimentalists have demonstrated their impressive ability to control mechanical modes within mesoscopic objects down to the quantum level: it is now possible to create mechanical Fock states, to entangle mechanical modes from distinct objects, store quantum information or transfer it from one quantum bit to another, among the many possibilities found in today's literature. Indeed mechanics is quantum, very much like spins or electromagnetic degrees of freedom. And all of this is in particular referred to as a new engineering resource for quantum technologies. But ther…
