arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Jeffrey Bub.
This article deals with theoretical developments in the subject of quantum information and quantum computation, and includes an overview of classical information and some relevant quantum mechanics. The discussion covers topics in quantum communication, quantum cryptography, and quantum computation, and concludes by considering whether a perspective in terms of quantum information sheds new light on the conceptual problems of quantum mechanics.
I argue that quantum mechanics is fundamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles. The notion of quantum information is to be understood as a new physical primitive -- just as, following Einstein's special theory of relativity, a field is no longer regarded as the physical manifestation of vibrations in a mechanical medium, but recognized as a new physical primitive in its own right.
This paper is a commentary on the foundational significance of the Clifton-Bub-Halvorson theorem characterizing quantum theory in terms of three information-theoretic constraints (Foundations of Physics 33, 1561-1591 (2003); quant-ph/0211089). I argue that: (1) a quantum theory is best understood as a theory about the possibilities and impossibilities of information transfer, as opposed to a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles, (2) given the information-theoretic constraints, any mechanical theory of quantum phenomena that includes an account of the measuring instruments that reveal these phenomena must be empirically equivalent to a quantum theory, and (3) assuming the information-theoretic constraints are in fact satisfied in our world, no mechanical theory of quantum phenomena that includes an account of measurement interactions can be acceptable, and the appropriate aim of physics at the fundamental level then becomes the representation and manipulation of information.
Clifton, Bub, and Halvorson (CBH) have argued that quantum mechanics can be derived from three cryptographic, or broadly information-theoretic, axioms. But Smolin disagrees, and he has given a toy theory that he claims is a counterexample. Here we show that Smolin's toy theory violates an independence condition for spacelike separated systems that was assumed in the CBH argument. We then argue that any acceptable physical theory should satisfy this independence condition.
We show that three fundamental information-theoretic constraints--the impossibility of superluminal information transfer between two physical systems by performing measurements on one of them, the impossibility of broadcasting the information contained in an unknown physical state, and the impossibility of unconditionally secure bit commitment--suffice to entail that the observables and state space of a physical theory are quantum-mechanical. We demonstrate the converse derivation in part, and consider the implications of alternative answers to a remaining open question about nonlocality and bit commitment.
Unconditionally secure two-party bit commitment based solely on the principles of quantum mechanics (without exploiting special relativistic signalling constraints, or principles of general relativity or thermodynamics) has been shown to be impossible, but the claim is repeatedly challenged. The quantum bit commitment theorem is reviewed here and the central conceptual point, that an `Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen' attack or cheating strategy can always be applied, is clarified. The question of whether following such a cheating strategy can ever be disadvantageous to the cheater is considered and answered in the negative. There is, indeed, no loophole in the theorem.
I show how quantum mechanics, like the theory of relativity, can be understood as a 'principle theory' in Einstein's sense, and I use this notion to explore the approach to the problem of interpretation developed in my book Interpreting the Quantum World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
We show that the Bub-Clifton uniqueness theorem for 'no collapse' interpretations of quantum mechanics (Studies in the History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 27, 181-219 (1996)) can be proved without the 'weak separability' assumption.