Does Protective Measurement Tell us Anything about Quantum Reality?

Department Colloquia

Speaker: Amit Hagar, Indiana University, History & Philosophy of Science department
Date & Time: February 13, 2014 16:00 - 17:00
Location: UBC, Hennings 201
Local Contact: Robert Raussendorf, Bill Unruh, Philip Stamp
Intended Audience: Graduate

An analysis of the two routes through which one may disentangle a quantum system from a measuring apparatus, hence protect the state vector of a single quantum system, reveals that the argument from protected measurement to the reality of the state vector of a single quantum system is circular. Lessons on the available “interpretations” of quantum theory and on the debate on the quantum measurement problem are drawn from this negative result.