Von Neumann's Formulation of Quantum Theory and the Role of Mind in Nature
Henry P. Stapp
备注：
Submitted Jan. 12, 2001 to Proc. Roy. Soc.. The first half, apart from title and abstract, is taken from my earlier paper ``From Quantum Nonlocality to Mind-Brain Interaction''
Orthodox Copenhagen quantum theory renounces the quest to understand the reality in which we are imbedded, and settles for practical rules that describe connections between our observations. Many physicist have believed that this renunciation of the attempt describe nature herself was premature, and John von Neumann, in a major work, reformulated quantum theory as theory of the evolving objective universe. In the course of his work he converted to a benefit what had appeared to be a severe deficiency of the Copenhagen interpretation, namely its introduction into physical theory of the human observers. He used this subjective element of quantum theory to achieve a significant advance on the main problem in philosophy, which is to understand the relationship between mind and matter. That problem had been tied closely to physical theory by the works of Newton and Descartes. The present work examines the major problems that have appeared to block the development of von Neumann's theory into a fully satisfactory theory of Nature, and proposes solutions to these problems.
In this paper, we derive a general formula of the tangle for pure states of three qubits, and present three explicit local unitary (LU) polynomial invariants. Our result goes beyond the classical work of tangle, 3-tangle and von Neumann entropy of entanglement for Ac\'ın et al.' Schmidt decomposition (ASD) of three qubits by connecting the tangle, 3-tangle, and von Neumann entropy for ASD with Ac\'ın et al.'s LU invariants. In particular, our result reveals a general relation among tangle, 3-tangle, and von Neumann entropy, together with a relation among their averages. The relations can help …
Few things in physics have caused so much hand-wringing as von Neumann's collapse hypothesis. Unable to derive it mathematically, von Neumann attributed it to interaction with the observer's brain! Few physicists agreed, but tweaks of von Neumann's measurement theory did not lead to collapse, and Shimony and Brown proved theorems establishing `the insolubility of the quantum measurement problem'. Many different `interpretations' of quantum mechanics were put forward, none gained a consensus, and some scholars suggested that the foundations of quantum mechanics were flawed to begin with. Yet, i…
Recently, attention has returned to the now-famous 1932 thought experiment in which John von Neumann establishes the form of the quantum mechanical von Neumann entropy -Tr $ ρ\ln ρ$ ($S_{VN}$), supposedly by arguing for its correspondence with the phenomenological thermodynamic entropy ($S_{TD}$). Hemmo and Shenker (2006) reconstruct von Neumann's thought experiment and argue that it fails to establish this desired correspondence. Prunkl (2019) and Chua (2019) challenge Hemmo and Shenker's result in turn. This paper aims to provide a new foundation for the current debate by revisiting the orig…
Jensen's inequality for partial traces in von Neumann algebras
Wallenberg Centre for Quantum Technology, Chalmers University of Technology（瓦伦堡量子技术中心，查尔姆斯理工大学）；Department of Mathematical Sciences, Chalmers University of Technology and University of Gothenburg（查尔姆斯理工大学和哥德堡大学数学科学系）
