- #141
iste
- 104
- 49
Apologies late reply and that this is long. I just always want to ensure I am being clear.
Because in Barandes' formulation, the definite outcomes or configurations the system are in do not appear in the traditional objects of quantum mechanics like wave-functions, density matrices, etc.
First, to clarify generally:
For statistical systems you might distinguish 1) the probability space / random variables, which carry statistical information; from 2) the realized outcomes. (I will be repeating these two numbers a lot in this post so these are what I mean when I say them). At any time, a statistical system could be said to produce a definite outcome which is a physical event; like if you roll a dice, you always only get one number at a given time. The long-run behavior of that dice rolling is described by probability spaces and random variables but these just predict the actual realizations when you repeat the scenario indefinitely. The objects of 1) therefore are not the physical events themselves that appear in a particular time or place - probability spaces are abstract constructs for prediction. The actual physical events are the objects of 2), the actual realized outcomes i.e. what happens when you actually throw the dice a single time.
Back to Barandes' formulation:
His papers essentially translate between stochastic matrices and a Hilbert Space representation to dress up a stochastic process in the quantum formalism. Importantly, only 1) is being translated. Virtually all of the traditional objects of quantum mechanics are coming from 1) which do not represent physical events.
All of the fundamental results about non-locality and contextuality are therefore concerning objects of 1) when they have been dressed up in quantum formalism. Now, from Barandes' formulation you can also translate quantum mechanics back into a generalized stochastic framework. So what is going to happen? Well nothing is being changed about the information in quantum mechanics, only the formalism is changed. Therefore contextuality and non-locality are preserved when described in the stochastic framework; but now, in addition, you will have these definite realized outcomes since all that has happened is we have translated quantum objects back into objects of probability spaces / random variables, and these will give realized outcomes that were not explicit in the traditional quantum formalism.
Superpositions will therefore not have definite values on all bases simultaneously like you say - they will be the same as normal quantum mechanics. But they will ALSO realize definite outcomes which can be seen when you translate the quantum system into a stochastic one and are not observable from looking at the objects of quantum mechanics in the same way that I cannot see my realized outcome for rolling a 4 at t5 just by looking at the probabilities for rolling a 4.
In fact, I can talk about probability spaces and random variables without ever explicitly talking about the realized outcomes. The fact I rolled a particular number at t4 and another at t8 is immaterial to the description at the level of random variables and probability spaces. All the things I can prove wrt to probability theory don't rely on specific realized outcomes. So there is no reason why introducing realized outcomes should change anything about the quantum formalism. Its just the fact that you can translate it back into the formalism of a stochastic system implies it has definite outcomes at any particular time which are predicted from probability spaces, though not in as straightforward away as for conventional Markov systems which is the way people tend to think about stochastic systems.
The coherences of superposition in this formulation is information, even if more implicitly, about long-run statistics, not about any actual physical event that exists in a specific time and place. There is therefore no contradiction here in exactly the same way that having a probability distribution for dice rolls does not contradict definite realized outcomes every time we roll a dice. The fact that superposition does not look like a normal classical probability distribution is a red herring because we are talking about a special (well actually, generalized) kind of stochastic system.
Yes, like I say, this is because quantum mechanics is only about 1) which are not physical events or objects in Barandes' formulation. 2) only becomes apparent when you translate the quantum system into a stochastic one. Everything Bell said applies to this translated stochastic system... because all of these formal results are about 1), which are just statistics. There is therefore no contradiction between the notions of a system displaying both contextuality and non-local statistics in 1), which then also realizes definite outcomes of 2). Nothing Bell says rules out anything about 2).
The generalized stochastic systems in Barandes' papers and quantum systems will both display non-local behavior in that they are both equivalent to each other.
Barandes demonstrates that you can get the kind of non-local behavior of quantum mechanics by just constructing a generalized stochastic system. He doesn't explicitly say how, just that it does naturally occur in the generalized stochastic system.
My view is that it can be explained following from results like Fine's theorem. Bell violations are equivalent to the absence of joint probability distributions. From what I can see, the indivisibility condition Barandes' uses as a prominent part of defining a generalized stochastic system does correspond to the absences of joint probability distributions which are directly related to Bell violations. As I noted before, this is of a formal nature and so no special physical mechanisms are required, just the inability to construct a context-invariant joint probability distribution. That doesn't mean the systems are not entirely well-defined, just not on a single probability space.
I can't say much else without being too speculative but it maybe worth noting a secondary point that the equivalence between Bell violations and absent joint probability distributions suggests that the crucial factor above all else is just incompatible observables. This paper even suggests that entanglement isn't strictly required for Bell violations:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.02702
From my understanding, the root of all these examples is contextuality as expressed in the absence of joint probability distributions, and this does seem to be a prominent assumption in Barandes' formulation where it is also responsible for quantum interference.
Finally, going back to an earlier point you said:
This phenomena is not so weird in stochastic interpretations as implied by Barandes' formulation. The particle is set on a trajectory and its configuration is always randomly changing over. Therefore, at a point in time just before it is measured, it will be in a different configuration to what it will be when the measurement interaction eventually happens. Similarly, the configuration at both these time points will be different to the particle's configuration at the beginning of its trajectory. Its always changing. The particle is always in a definite configuration and has a definite trajectory but the configuration just changes randomly at every time point on the trajectory. Obviously the only configuration seen by the experimenter is the one that is eventually measured. The quantum state, the wavefunction are not physical objects but solely carry statistical information. Because the eventual measured configuration randomly occurs at the point of measurement, it is not correct to say that outcomes depend on a future context in this formulation because that assumes the particle was only ever in one configuration decided at the beginning of its trajectory. At the point of measurement, the observed outcome will occur randomly according to a joint probability distribution that depends on the measurement setting there and then. The absence of context-invariant joint distribution then implies Bell violations under Fine's theorem due to the non-commutativity between measurement settings which is sufficient to preclude a joint distribution even though the measured pairs commute.
DrChinese said:What?? That is exactly the opposite of b. How can a superposition yield definite values on all bases simultaneously? And even if they could, how do those values appear when measured on a specific basis such that it follows quantum statistics if they are to be called "localized". (Whatever that is supposed to mean in this context, since c. above implies exactly the opposite.)
Because in Barandes' formulation, the definite outcomes or configurations the system are in do not appear in the traditional objects of quantum mechanics like wave-functions, density matrices, etc.
First, to clarify generally:
For statistical systems you might distinguish 1) the probability space / random variables, which carry statistical information; from 2) the realized outcomes. (I will be repeating these two numbers a lot in this post so these are what I mean when I say them). At any time, a statistical system could be said to produce a definite outcome which is a physical event; like if you roll a dice, you always only get one number at a given time. The long-run behavior of that dice rolling is described by probability spaces and random variables but these just predict the actual realizations when you repeat the scenario indefinitely. The objects of 1) therefore are not the physical events themselves that appear in a particular time or place - probability spaces are abstract constructs for prediction. The actual physical events are the objects of 2), the actual realized outcomes i.e. what happens when you actually throw the dice a single time.
Back to Barandes' formulation:
His papers essentially translate between stochastic matrices and a Hilbert Space representation to dress up a stochastic process in the quantum formalism. Importantly, only 1) is being translated. Virtually all of the traditional objects of quantum mechanics are coming from 1) which do not represent physical events.
All of the fundamental results about non-locality and contextuality are therefore concerning objects of 1) when they have been dressed up in quantum formalism. Now, from Barandes' formulation you can also translate quantum mechanics back into a generalized stochastic framework. So what is going to happen? Well nothing is being changed about the information in quantum mechanics, only the formalism is changed. Therefore contextuality and non-locality are preserved when described in the stochastic framework; but now, in addition, you will have these definite realized outcomes since all that has happened is we have translated quantum objects back into objects of probability spaces / random variables, and these will give realized outcomes that were not explicit in the traditional quantum formalism.
Superpositions will therefore not have definite values on all bases simultaneously like you say - they will be the same as normal quantum mechanics. But they will ALSO realize definite outcomes which can be seen when you translate the quantum system into a stochastic one and are not observable from looking at the objects of quantum mechanics in the same way that I cannot see my realized outcome for rolling a 4 at t5 just by looking at the probabilities for rolling a 4.
In fact, I can talk about probability spaces and random variables without ever explicitly talking about the realized outcomes. The fact I rolled a particular number at t4 and another at t8 is immaterial to the description at the level of random variables and probability spaces. All the things I can prove wrt to probability theory don't rely on specific realized outcomes. So there is no reason why introducing realized outcomes should change anything about the quantum formalism. Its just the fact that you can translate it back into the formalism of a stochastic system implies it has definite outcomes at any particular time which are predicted from probability spaces, though not in as straightforward away as for conventional Markov systems which is the way people tend to think about stochastic systems.
The coherences of superposition in this formulation is information, even if more implicitly, about long-run statistics, not about any actual physical event that exists in a specific time and place. There is therefore no contradiction here in exactly the same way that having a probability distribution for dice rolls does not contradict definite realized outcomes every time we roll a dice. The fact that superposition does not look like a normal classical probability distribution is a red herring because we are talking about a special (well actually, generalized) kind of stochastic system.
DrChinese said:Admittedly they don't exist in orthodox QM. After Bell, this is explicitly ruled out! You cannot have such outcomes - well they are even outcomes as they aren't measured - and also say it will agree with the predictions of QM. They call that...hand-waving.
Yes, like I say, this is because quantum mechanics is only about 1) which are not physical events or objects in Barandes' formulation. 2) only becomes apparent when you translate the quantum system into a stochastic one. Everything Bell said applies to this translated stochastic system... because all of these formal results are about 1), which are just statistics. There is therefore no contradiction between the notions of a system displaying both contextuality and non-local statistics in 1), which then also realizes definite outcomes of 2). Nothing Bell says rules out anything about 2).
DrChinese said:So stochastic systems exhibit nonlocal behavior but feature no nonlocality? Or what?
The generalized stochastic systems in Barandes' papers and quantum systems will both display non-local behavior in that they are both equivalent to each other.
DrChinese said:Yes, if there is some nonlocal mechanism here that keeps entangled systems synchronized or otherwise in some kind of contact when their spatial extent grows, then all is good and I am satisfied. But that is not what I am reading.
Barandes demonstrates that you can get the kind of non-local behavior of quantum mechanics by just constructing a generalized stochastic system. He doesn't explicitly say how, just that it does naturally occur in the generalized stochastic system.
My view is that it can be explained following from results like Fine's theorem. Bell violations are equivalent to the absence of joint probability distributions. From what I can see, the indivisibility condition Barandes' uses as a prominent part of defining a generalized stochastic system does correspond to the absences of joint probability distributions which are directly related to Bell violations. As I noted before, this is of a formal nature and so no special physical mechanisms are required, just the inability to construct a context-invariant joint probability distribution. That doesn't mean the systems are not entirely well-defined, just not on a single probability space.
DrChinese said:2. How can anyone say with a straight face that they are presenting something novel, it's just like QM only better, and then blatantly ignore the obvious hurdles of things like swapping and GHZ.
Barandes' formulation should be able to recreate all GHZ and entanglement swapping phenomenon because the core of these papers is just a "dictionary" which one can use to translate between quantum and stochastic formalisms whilst retaining all of the same behavior and properties. I don't see why it shouldn't work in the same for these cases even though they may seem particularly strange.DrChinese said:a. Swapping: Systems become entangled without ever existing in a common local region. You think that is a "stochastic" result? I don't think that does very far as an argument.
b. GHZ: The assumption that particles have pre-existing values for observables yields predictions that are diametrically opposed to experiment in each and every case?
I can't say much else without being too speculative but it maybe worth noting a secondary point that the equivalence between Bell violations and absent joint probability distributions suggests that the crucial factor above all else is just incompatible observables. This paper even suggests that entanglement isn't strictly required for Bell violations:
https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.02702
Again, Barandes' formulation implies that any quantum scenario displaying behaviors typified by these results can just be translated into a stochastic system. Nothing different to standard quantum mechanics is implied.DrChinese said:GHZ, PBR*, Kochen-Specker-Bell, Leggett, Hardy...
*Psi-epistemic is a common term for "the wavefunction is clearly not physically real". Directly disproven by PBR.
From my understanding, the root of all these examples is contextuality as expressed in the absence of joint probability distributions, and this does seem to be a prominent assumption in Barandes' formulation where it is also responsible for quantum interference.
Finally, going back to an earlier point you said:
DrChinese said:Statistical outcomes are dependent on a future context, even when the measurement setting are changed midflight and are far distant. That's good, dozens of experiments show this exact point. It also means that particle observables don't have definite values outside of when they have an eigenvalue.
This phenomena is not so weird in stochastic interpretations as implied by Barandes' formulation. The particle is set on a trajectory and its configuration is always randomly changing over. Therefore, at a point in time just before it is measured, it will be in a different configuration to what it will be when the measurement interaction eventually happens. Similarly, the configuration at both these time points will be different to the particle's configuration at the beginning of its trajectory. Its always changing. The particle is always in a definite configuration and has a definite trajectory but the configuration just changes randomly at every time point on the trajectory. Obviously the only configuration seen by the experimenter is the one that is eventually measured. The quantum state, the wavefunction are not physical objects but solely carry statistical information. Because the eventual measured configuration randomly occurs at the point of measurement, it is not correct to say that outcomes depend on a future context in this formulation because that assumes the particle was only ever in one configuration decided at the beginning of its trajectory. At the point of measurement, the observed outcome will occur randomly according to a joint probability distribution that depends on the measurement setting there and then. The absence of context-invariant joint distribution then implies Bell violations under Fine's theorem due to the non-commutativity between measurement settings which is sufficient to preclude a joint distribution even though the measured pairs commute.