dc.contributor.author | Ruebeck, Joshua | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2019-08-06 20:12:48 (GMT) | |
dc.date.available | 2019-08-06 20:12:48 (GMT) | |
dc.date.issued | 2019-08-06 | |
dc.date.submitted | 2019-07-19 | |
dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10012/14845 | |
dc.description.abstract | Since the famous debates of Einstein & Bohr, physicists have argued about the nature of the quantum state. Is it best thought of as describing the-way-things-are out there in the world, or merely as a description of our knowledge of such things? In more recent years, this has been termed the ψ-epistemic/ψ-ontic debate, and that distinction has been given a mathematical definition within the ontological models formalism. This formalism is a framework for describing a large class of interpretations of quantum mechanics. Here we show that consideration of sequential measurements, and the fact that the quantum state changes during measurements, has been a neglected topic in this area as it places nontrivial restrictions on the structure of ψ-epistemic ontological models.
We do this by finding a general restriction on the structure of ψ-epistemic models, although not one that is strong enough to rule them out categorically. We then apply this restriction to all of the known examples of ψ-epistemic ontological models and show that they can’t represent sequential measurements. We also present a new version of the ontological models formalism, based on hidden Markov models, which we develop briefly and describe how it may be useful for either proving a no-go theorem (i.e. ‘ψ-epistemic models can’t exist’) or for learning more about the structure of ψ-epistemic models and how to construct them. | en |
dc.language.iso | en | en |
dc.publisher | University of Waterloo | en |
dc.subject | quantum foundations | en |
dc.subject | quantum physics | en |
dc.subject | interpretations | en |
dc.subject | ontological models | en |
dc.title | Understanding sequential measurements in psi-epistemic ontological models | en |
dc.type | Master Thesis | en |
dc.pending | false | |
uws-etd.degree.department | Physics and Astronomy | en |
uws-etd.degree.discipline | Physics (Quantum Information) | en |
uws-etd.degree.grantor | University of Waterloo | en |
uws-etd.degree | Master of Science | en |
uws.contributor.advisor | Emerson, Joseph | |
uws.contributor.affiliation1 | Faculty of Science | en |
uws.published.city | Waterloo | en |
uws.published.country | Canada | en |
uws.published.province | Ontario | en |
uws.typeOfResource | Text | en |
uws.peerReviewStatus | Unreviewed | en |
uws.scholarLevel | Graduate | en |