On Formalisms and Interpretations

Veronika Baumann; Stefan Wolf

doi:10.22331/q-2018-10-15-99

One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism $\textit{versus}$ interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there are actually two $\textit{inequivalent}$ quantum formalisms, namely the relative-state formalism and the standard formalism with the Born and measurement-update rules. We further propose a different probability rule for the relative-state formalism and discuss how Wigner's-friend-type experiments could show the inequivalence with the standard formalism. The feasibility in principle of such experiments, however, remains an open question.

► BibTeX data

@article{Baumann2018formalisms,
  doi = {10.22331/q-2018-10-15-99},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2018-10-15-99},
  title = {On {F}ormalisms and {I}nterpretations},
  author = {Baumann, Veronika and Wolf, Stefan},
  journal = {{Quantum}},
  issn = {2521-327X},
  publisher = {{Verein zur F{\"{o}}rderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften}},
  volume = {2},
  pages = {99},
  month = oct,
  year = {2018}
}

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This Paper is published in Quantum under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Copyright remains with the original copyright holders such as the authors or their institutions.

Published:	2018-10-15, volume 2, page 99
Eprint:	arXiv:1710.07212v6
Scirate:	https://scirate.com/arxiv/1710.07212v6
Doi:	https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2018-10-15-99
Citation:	Quantum 2, 99 (2018).

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