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arXiv · 1710.07212

On Formalisms and Interpretations

Veronika Baumann·Stefan Wolf
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Abstract

One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism versus interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there are actually two 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.

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Veronika Baumann, Stefan Wolf. 2018-10-09. On Formalisms and Interpretations. https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2018-10-15-99

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