Response to "The measurement postulates of quantum mechanics are not redundant"

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Masanes, Lluís, Galley, Thomas D., Müller, Markus P.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2023
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author Masanes, Lluís
Galley, Thomas D.
Müller, Markus P.
author_facet Masanes, Lluís
Galley, Thomas D.
Müller, Markus P.
contents Adrian Kent has recently presented a critique [arXiv:2307.06191] of our paper [Nat. Comms. 10, 1361 (2019)] in which he claims to refute our main result: the measurement postulates of quantum mechanics can be derived from the rest of postulates, once we assume that the set of mixed states of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space is finite-dimensional. To construct his argument, Kent considers theories resulting from supplementing quantum mechanics with hypothetical "post-quantum" measurement devices. We prove that each of these theories contains pure states (i.e. states of maximal knowledge) which are not rays of the Hilbert space, in contradiction with the "pure state postulate" of quantum mechanics. We also prove that these alternatives violate the finite-dimensionality of mixed states. Each of these two facts separately invalidates the refutation. In this note we also clarify the assumptions used in [Nat. Comms. 10, 1361 (2019)] and discuss the notions of pure state, physical system, and the sensitivity of the structure of the state space under modifications of the measurements or the dynamics.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_01650
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Response to "The measurement postulates of quantum mechanics are not redundant"
Masanes, Lluís
Galley, Thomas D.
Müller, Markus P.
Quantum Physics
Adrian Kent has recently presented a critique [arXiv:2307.06191] of our paper [Nat. Comms. 10, 1361 (2019)] in which he claims to refute our main result: the measurement postulates of quantum mechanics can be derived from the rest of postulates, once we assume that the set of mixed states of a finite-dimensional Hilbert space is finite-dimensional. To construct his argument, Kent considers theories resulting from supplementing quantum mechanics with hypothetical "post-quantum" measurement devices. We prove that each of these theories contains pure states (i.e. states of maximal knowledge) which are not rays of the Hilbert space, in contradiction with the "pure state postulate" of quantum mechanics. We also prove that these alternatives violate the finite-dimensionality of mixed states. Each of these two facts separately invalidates the refutation. In this note we also clarify the assumptions used in [Nat. Comms. 10, 1361 (2019)] and discuss the notions of pure state, physical system, and the sensitivity of the structure of the state space under modifications of the measurements or the dynamics.
title Response to "The measurement postulates of quantum mechanics are not redundant"
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.01650