arXiv subjects

Ken Williams

Publications and source records attributed to Ken Williams.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2005

A Question of Self-consistent Semifactuality

This article is intended as a compendium and guide to the variety of Bell Inequality derivations that have appeared in the literature in recent years, classifying them into six broad categories, revealing the underlying, often hidden, assumption common to each - semifactuality. Evaluation of the attendant conditional brings to light a significant EPR loophole that has not appeared in the literature. Semantics for the inequality in the ongoing philosophic debate that led to its discovery is discussed.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Contextual Value-definiteness and the Kochen-Specker Paradox

Compatibility between the realist tenants of value-definiteness and causality is called into question by several realism impossibility proofs in which their formal elements are shown to conflict. We review how this comes about in the Kochen-Specker and von Neumann proofs and point out a connection between their key assumptions: a constraint on realist causality via additivity in the latter proof, noncontextuality in the former. We conclude that value-definiteness and contextuality are indeed not mutually exclusive.

quant-ph↗

arXiv2005

Syntactic and Semantic Distribution in Quantum Measurement

The nondistributivity of compound quantum mechanical propositions leads to a theorem that rules out the possibility of microscopic deterministic hidden variables, the Logical No-Go Theorem. We observe that there appear in fact two distinct nondistributivity relations in the derivation: one with a semantics governed by an empirical conjunctive syntax, the other composed of conjunctive primitives in the quantum mechanical probability calculus. We venture to speculate how the two come to be confused in the derivation of the theorem.

quant-ph↗

arXiv1997

On quark confinement dynamics

Starting from Buchmüller's observation that a chromoelectric flux tube meson will exhibit only the Thomas type spin-orbit interaction, we show that a model built upon the related assumption that a quark feels only a constant radial chromoelectric field in its rest frame implies a complete relativistic effective Hamiltonian that can be written explicitly in terms of quark canonical variables. The model yields linear Regge trajectories and exhibits some similarities to scalar confinement, but with the advantage of being more closely linked to QCD.

hep-ph↗