Single-world theory of the extended Wigner's friend experiment

TY - JOUR

T1 - Single-world theory of the extended Wigner's friend experiment

AU - Sudbery, Anthony

N1 - © The Author(s) 2017.

PY - 2017/5

Y1 - 2017/5

N2 - Frauchiger and Renner have recently claimed to prove that ``Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent". This is contradicted by a construction due to Bell, inspired by Bohmian mechanics, which shows that any quantum system can be modelled in such a way that there is only one ``world" at any time, but the predictions of quantum theory are reproduced. This Bell-Bohmian theory is applied to the experiment proposed by Frauchiger and Renner, and their argument is critically examined. It is concluded that it is their version of ``standard quantum theory", incorporating state vector collapse upon measurement, that is not self-consistent.

AB - Frauchiger and Renner have recently claimed to prove that ``Single-world interpretations of quantum theory cannot be self-consistent". This is contradicted by a construction due to Bell, inspired by Bohmian mechanics, which shows that any quantum system can be modelled in such a way that there is only one ``world" at any time, but the predictions of quantum theory are reproduced. This Bell-Bohmian theory is applied to the experiment proposed by Frauchiger and Renner, and their argument is critically examined. It is concluded that it is their version of ``standard quantum theory", incorporating state vector collapse upon measurement, that is not self-consistent.

UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.05873

U2 - 10.1007/s10701-017-0082-7

DO - 10.1007/s10701-017-0082-7

M3 - Article

SN - 0015-9018

VL - 47

SP - 658

EP - 669

JO - Foundations of Physics

JF - Foundations of Physics

IS - 5

ER -