Pith. sign in

REVIEW

Physics and Metaphysics of Wigner's Friends: Even performed pre-measurements have no results

Not yet reviewed by Pith; the record is open.

This paper has not been read by Pith yet. Machine review is queued; the pith claim, tier, and objections will appear here once it completes.

SPECIMEN: schema-true, not a live event

T0 review · schema-true

One-sentence machine reading of the paper's core claim.

pith:XXXXXXXX · record.json · timestamp

arxiv 2003.07464 v6 pith:77RM7X64 submitted 2020-03-16 quant-ph

Physics and Metaphysics of Wigner's Friends: Even performed pre-measurements have no results

classification quant-ph
keywords quantumpre-measurementresultssystemwigneraccountarrangementattempt
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
0 comments
read the original abstract

"The unambiguous account of proper quantum phenomena must, in principle, include a description of all relevant features of experimental arrangement" (Bohr). The measurement process is composed of pre-measurement (quantum correlation of the system with the pointer variable), and an irreversible decoherence via interaction with an environment. The system ends up in a probabilistic mixture of the eigenstates of the measured observable. For the pre-measurement stage, any attempt to introduce an 'outcome' leads, as we show, to a logical contradiction, $1=i$. This nullifies claims that a modified concept of Wigner's Friend, who just pre-measures, can lead to valid results concerning quantum theory.

discussion (0)

Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.