Framework for possible unification of quantum and relativity theories

Aerts, Diederik

doi:10.1007/bf02302456

Cited by 11 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…In this way, relativity theory conflicts with our deep intuition about the nature of reality in a manner such that we can not even well identify just where the contradiction lies. We have analysed in great detail this situation in [63,64], and shall come back to it after introducing an operational definition for reality such that we can detect what is the 'real' mystery.…”

Section: Theorem (Gleason)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Stuff the World is Made of: Physics and Reality

Aerts¹

1999

Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection

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137

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Taking into account the results that we have been obtained during the last decade in the foundations of quantum mechanic we put forward a view on reality that we call the 'creation discovery view'. In this view it is made explicit that a measurement is an act of a macroscopic physical entity on a microphysical entity that entails the creation of new elements of reality as well as the detection of existing elements of reality. Within this view most of the quantum mechanical paradoxes are due to structural shortcomings of the standard quantum theory, which means that our analysis agrees with the claim made in the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper, namely that standards quantum mechanics is an incomplete theory. This incompleteness is however not due to the absence of hidden variables but to the impossibility for standard quantum mechanics to describe separated quantum entities. Nonlocality appears as a genuine property of nature in our view and makes it necessary to reconsider the role of space in reality. Our proposal for a new interpretation for space makes it possible to put forward an new hypothesis for why it has not been possible to unify quantum mechanics and relativity theory.Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Absolute, true, and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equally without relation to anything external.Isaac Newton, 1642 -1726. * Published as: Aerts, D., 1999, "The stuff the world is made of: physics and reality", in Einstein meets Magritte: an interdisciplinary reflection, eds. Aerts, D., Broekaert, J. and Mathijs, E., Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht.

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Section: Theorem (Gleason)mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Stuff the World is Made of: Physics and Reality

Aerts¹

1999

Einstein Meets Magritte: An Interdisciplinary Reflection

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137

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“…This assumption is the one that makes it impossible, in our opinion, to use the approach of general relativity theory as a starting point for the new theory to be developed. In [59,60,61,62] we have worked out an approach that could remedy this state of affairs. The main idea is that the set of happenings, we have introduced the concept 'happening' in [59,60,61,62] to substitute for the concept 'event', to make it clear that what we do is different from general relativity, a priori does not coincide with the set of space-time points.…”

Section: Why General Relativity Is Not a Good Starting Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The main idea is that the set of happenings, we have introduced the concept 'happening' in [59,60,61,62] to substitute for the concept 'event', to make it clear that what we do is different from general relativity, a priori does not coincide with the set of space-time points. In the next section we explain the ideas and approach presented in [59,60,61,62].…”

Section: Why General Relativity Is Not a Good Starting Pointmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards a General Operational and Realistic Framework for Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory

Aerts¹,

Aerts²

2005

Quo Vadis Quantum Mechanics?

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We propose a general operational and realistic framework that aims at a generalization of quantum mechanics and relativity theory, such that both appear as special cases of this new theory. Our framework is operational, in the sense that all aspects are introduced with specific reference to events to be experienced, and realistic, in the sense that the hypothesis of an independent existing reality is taken seriously. To come to this framework we present a detailed study of standard quantum mechanics within the axiomatic approach to quantum mechanics, more specifically the Geneva-Brussels approach, identifying two of the traditional 6 axioms as 'failing axioms'. We prove that these two failing axioms are at the origin of the impossibility for standard quantum mechanics to describe a continuous change from quantum to classical and hence its inability to describe macroscopic physical reality. Moreover we show that the same two axioms are also at the origin of the impossibility for standard quantum mechanics to deliver a model for the compound entity of two 'separated' quantum entities. We put forward that it is necessary to replace these two axioms in order to proceed to the more general theory. Next we analyze the nature of the quantum probability model and show that it can be interpreted as the consequence of the presence of a lack of knowledge on the interaction between the measurement apparatus and the physical entity under consideration. These two insights, the failing axioms and the nature of quantum probability, give rise to a very specific view on the quantum phenomenon of nonlocality. Nonlocality should be interpreted as nonspatiality. This means that an entity in a nonlocal state, like for example the typical EPR state, is 'not inside space'. As a consequence, space is no longer the all embracing theatre of reality, but a structure that has emerged together with the macroscopic material entities that have emerged from the microworld. This clarifies why general relativity theory cannot be used as a basis for the elaboration of the new generalized theory, since in general relativity theory the set of events is taken a priori to be the time-space continuum. Hence in general relativity theory time-space is a basic structure considered to capture all of reality. In our framework we introduce 'happenings' and the 'set of happenings' as constituting reality. A happening is however not identified with a point of time-space, as this is the case for an events of general relativity theory. We analyze different aspects of the new framework, and list the most important problems to be investigated for an elaboration of this framework into a workable and as complete as possible theory.

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“…For sake of completeness we mention other work that has contributed to advances in the approach that is less directly of importance for what we do in this paper, but shows how the approach is developing into other directions as well [52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60,61,62,63,64,65,66,67,68,69,70,71,72,73,74,75,76,77,78,79,80,81].…”

Section: How We Will Proceedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Being and Change: Foundations of a Realistic Operational Formalism

Aerts¹

2002

Probing the Structure of Quantum Mechanics

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The aim of this article is to represent the general description of an entity by means of its states, contexts and properties. The entity that we want to describe does not necessarily have to be a physical entity, but can also be an entity of a more abstract nature, for example a concept, or a cultural artifact, or the mind of a person, etc..., which means that we aim at very general description. The effect that a context has on the state of the entity plays a fundamental role, which means that our approach is intrinsically contextual. The approach is inspired by the mathematical formalisms that have been developed in axiomatic quantum mechanics, where a specific type of quantum contextuality is modelled. However, because in general states also influence contextwhich is not the case in quantum mechanics -we need a more general setting than the one used there. Our focus on context as a fundamental concept makes it possible to unify 'dynamical change' and 'change under influence of measurement', which makes our approach also more general and more powerful than the traditional quantum axiomatic approaches. For this reason an experiment (or measurement) is introduced as a specific kind of context. Mathematically we introduce a state context property system as the structure to describe an entity by means of its states, contexts and properties. We also strive from the start to a categorical setting and derive the morphisms between * Published as: D. Aerts, "Being and change: foundations of a realistic operational formalism", in Probing the Structure of Quantum Mechanics: Nonlinearity, Nonlocality, Computation and Axiomatics, eds. D. Aerts, M. Czachor and T. Durt, World Scientific, Singapore (2002). 1 state context property systems from a merological covariance principle. We introduce the category SCOP with as elements the state context property systems and as morphisms the ones that we derived from this merological covariance principle. We introduce property completeness and state completeness and study the operational foundation of the formalism.

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Framework for possible unification of quantum and relativity theories

Cited by 11 publications

References 11 publications

The Stuff the World is Made of: Physics and Reality

The Stuff the World is Made of: Physics and Reality

Towards a General Operational and Realistic Framework for Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory

Being and Change: Foundations of a Realistic Operational Formalism

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