According to a well-known principle of quantum physics, the statistics of the outcomes of any quantum experiment are governed by a Positive-Operator-Valued Measure (POVM). In particular, for experiments designed to measure a specific physical quantity, like the time of a particle's first arrival at a surface, this principle establishes that if the probability distribution of that quantity does not arise from a POVM, no such experiment exists. Such is the case with the arrival time distributions proposed by Das and Dürr, due to the nature of their spin dependence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe biggest and most lasting among David Bohm's (1917-1992) many achievements is to have proposed a picture of reality that explains the empirical rules of quantum mechanics. This picture, known as pilot wave theory or Bohmian mechanics among other names, is still the simplest and most convincing explanation available. According to this theory, electrons are point particles in the literal sense and move along trajectories governed by Bohm's equation of motion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe consider the notion of thermal equilibrium for an individual closed macroscopic quantum system in a pure state, i.e., described by a wave function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMulti-time equations are evolution equations involving several time variables, one for each particle. Such equations have been considered for the purpose of making theories manifestly Lorentz invariant. We compare their status and significance in classical and quantum physics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys
January 2010
We consider an isolated macroscopic quantum system. Let H be a microcanonical "energy shell," i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIt is well known that a system weakly coupled to a heat bath is described by the canonical ensemble when the composite S + B is described by the microcanonical ensemble corresponding to a suitable energy shell. This is true for both classical distributions on the phase space and quantum density matrices. Here we show that a much stronger statement holds for quantum systems.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe discuss a recently proposed extension of Bohmian mechanics to quantum field theory. For more or less any regularized quantum field theory there is a corresponding theory of particle motion, which, in particular, ascribes trajectories to the electrons or whatever sort of particles the quantum field theory is about. Corresponding to the nonconservation of the particle number operator in the quantum field theory, the theory describes explicit creation and annihilation events: the world lines for the particles can begin and end.
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