This is a list of this week’s papers on quantum foundations published in various journals or uploaded to preprint servers such as arxiv.org and PhilSci Archive.
ScienceDirect Publication: Physics Reports
on 2015-11-27 8:43pm GMT
Publication date: Available online 22 November 2015
Source:Physics Reports
Author(s): James A. Blackburn, Matteo Cirillo, Niels Grønbech-Jensen
For decades following its introduction in 1968, the resistively and capacitively shunted junction (RCSJ) model, sometimes referred to as the Stewart–McCumber model, was successfully applied to study the dynamics of Josephson junctions embedded in a variety of superconducting circuits. In 1980 a theoretical conjecture by A.J. Leggett suggested a possible new and quite different behavior for Josephson junctions at very low temperatures. A number of experiments seemed to confirm this prediction and soon it was taken as a given that junctions at tens of millikelvins should be regarded as macroscopic quantum entities. As such, they would possess discrete levels in their effective potential wells, and would escape from those wells (with the appearance of a finite junction voltage) via a macroscopic quantum tunneling process. A zeal to pursue this new physics led to a virtual abandonment of the RCSJ model in this low temperature regime. In this paper we consider a selection of essentially prototypical experiments that were carried out with the intention of confirming aspects of anticipated macroscopic quantum behavior in Josephson junctions. We address two questions: (1) How successful is the non-quantum theory (RCSJ model) in replicating those experiments? (2) How strong is the evidence that data from these same experiments does indeed reflect macroscopic quantum behavior?
Measuring non-Hermitian operators via weak values
on 2015-11-25 3:00pm GMT
Author(s): Arun Kumar Pati, Uttam Singh, and Urbasi Sinha
In quantum theory, a physical observable is represented by a Hermitian operator as it admits real eigenvalues. This stems from the fact that any measuring apparatus that is supposed to measure a physical observable will always yield a real number. However, the reality of an eigenvalue of some operat…
[Phys. Rev. A 92, 052120] Published Wed Nov 25, 2015
Testing Nonassociative Quantum Mechanics
PRL: General Physics: Statistical and Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Information, etc.
on 2015-11-24 3:00pm GMT
Author(s): Martin Bojowald, Suddhasattwa Brahma, and Umut Büyükçam
The familiar concepts of state vectors and operators in quantum mechanics rely on associative products of observables. However, these notions do not apply to some exotic systems such as magnetic monopoles, which have long been known to lead to nonassociative algebras. Their quantum physics has remai…
[Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 220402] Published Tue Nov 24, 2015
