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The Principles of Quantum Mechanics
01 Jan 1930-
About: The article was published on 1930-01-01 and is currently open access. It has received 5991 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Quantum statistical mechanics & Open quantum system.
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TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that even without such a separability or locality requirement, no hidden variable interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible and that such an interpretation has a grossly nonlocal structure, which is characteristic of any such theory which reproduces exactly the quantum mechanical predictions.
Abstract: THE paradox of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen [1] was advanced as an argument that quantum mechanics could not be a complete theory but should be supplemented by additional variables These additional variables were to restore to the theory causality and locality [2] In this note that idea will be formulated mathematically and shown to be incompatible with the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics It is the requirement of locality, or more precisely that the result of a measurement on one system be unaffected by operations on a distant system with which it has interacted in the past, that creates the essential difficulty There have been attempts [3] to show that even without such a separability or locality requirement no "hidden variable" interpretation of quantum mechanics is possible These attempts have been examined elsewhere [4] and found wanting Moreover, a hidden variable interpretation of elementary quantum theory [5] has been explicitly constructed That particular interpretation has indeed a grossly nonlocal structure This is characteristic, according to the result to be proved here, of any such theory which reproduces exactly the quantum mechanical predictions
10,253 citations
01 Jan 1957
TL;DR: The theory of atoms with one or two electrons is the simplest and most completely treated field of application of quantum mechanics as mentioned in this paper, and it is one of the simplest fields of application for quantum mechanics.
Abstract: One of the simplest, and most completely treated, fields of application of quantum mechanics is the theory of atoms with one or two electrons For hydrogen and the analcgous ions He+, Li++, etc, the calculations can be performed exactly, both in Schrodinger’s nonrelativistic wave mechanics and in Dirac’s relativistic theory of the electron More specifically, the calculations are exact for a single electron in a fixed Coulomb potential Hydrogen-like atoms thus furnish an excellent way of testing the validity of quantum mechanics For such atoms the correction terms due to the motion and structure of atomic nuclei and due to quantum electrodynamic effects are small and can be calculated with high accuracy Since the energy levels of hydrogen and similar atoms can be investigated experimentally to an astounding degree of accuracy, some accurate tests of the validity of quantum electrodynamics are also possible Finally, the theory of such atoms in an external electric or magnetic field has also been developed in detail and compared with experiment
5,385 citations
TL;DR: U(2) gates are derived, which derive upper and lower bounds on the exact number of elementary gates required to build up a variety of two- and three-bit quantum gates, the asymptotic number required for n-bit Deutsch-Toffoli gates, and make some observations about the number of unitary operations on arbitrarily many bits.
Abstract: We show that a set of gates that consists of all one-bit quantum gates (U(2)) and the two-bit exclusive-or gate (that maps Boolean values (x,y) to (x,x ⊕y)) is universal in the sense that all unitary operations on arbitrarily many bits n (U(2 n )) can be expressed as compositions of these gates. We investigate the number of the above gates required to implement other gates, such as generalized Deutsch-Toffoli gates, that apply a specific U(2) transformation to one input bit if and only if the logical AND of all remaining input bits is satisfied. These gates play a central role in many proposed constructions of quantum computational networks. We derive upper and lower bounds on the exact number of elementary gates required to build up a variety of two- and three-bit quantum gates, the asymptotic number required for n-bit Deutsch-Toffoli gates, and make some observations about the number required for arbitrary n-bit unitary operations.
3,731 citations
TL;DR: In this article, it was shown that many of the symptoms of classicality can be induced in quantum systems by their environments, which leads to environment-induced superselection or einselection, a quantum process associated with selective loss of information.
Abstract: as quantum engineering. In the past two decades it has become increasingly clear that many (perhaps all) of the symptoms of classicality can be induced in quantum systems by their environments. Thus decoherence is caused by the interaction in which the environment in effect monitors certain observables of the system, destroying coherence between the pointer states corresponding to their eigenvalues. This leads to environment-induced superselection or einselection, a quantum process associated with selective loss of information. Einselected pointer states are stable. They can retain correlations with the rest of the universe in spite of the environment. Einselection enforces classicality by imposing an effective ban on the vast majority of the Hilbert space, eliminating especially the flagrantly nonlocal ''Schrodinger-cat states.'' The classical structure of phase space emerges from the quantum Hilbert space in the appropriate macroscopic limit. Combination of einselection with dynamics leads to the idealizations of a point and of a classical trajectory. In measurements, einselection replaces quantum entanglement between the apparatus and the measured system with the classical correlation. Only the preferred pointer observable of the apparatus can store information that has predictive power. When the measured quantum system is microscopic and isolated, this restriction on the predictive utility of its correlations with the macroscopic apparatus results in the effective ''collapse of the wave packet.'' The existential interpretation implied by einselection regards observers as open quantum systems, distinguished only by their ability to acquire, store, and process information. Spreading of the correlations with the effectively classical pointer states throughout the environment allows one to understand ''classical reality'' as a property based on the relatively objective existence of the einselected states. Effectively classical pointer states can be ''found out'' without being re-prepared, e.g, by intercepting the information already present in the environment. The redundancy of the records of pointer states in the environment (which can be thought of as their ''fitness'' in the Darwinian sense) is a measure of their classicality. A new symmetry appears in this setting. Environment-assisted invariance or envariance sheds new light on the nature of ignorance of the state of the system due to quantum correlations with the environment and leads to Born's rules and to reduced density matrices, ultimately justifying basic principles of the program of decoherence and einselection.
3,499 citations
01 Jan 1949
TL;DR: In this article, an attempt is made to interpret quantum mechanics as a statistical theory, or more exactly as a form of non-deterministic statistical dynamics, which may hence be considered as an interpretation of quantum kinematics.
Abstract: An attempt is made to interpret quantum mechanics as a statistical theory, or more exactly as a form of non-deterministic statistical dynamics. The paper falls into three parts. In the first, the distribution functions of the complete set of dynamical variables specifying a mechanical system (phase-space distributions), which are fundamental in any form of statistical dynamics, are expressed in terms of the wave vectors of quantum theory. This is shown to be equivalent to specifying a theory of functions of non-commuting operators, and may hence be considered as an interpretation of quantum kinematics. In the second part, the laws governing the transformation with time of these phase-space distributions are derived from the equations of motion of quantum dynamics and found to be of the required form for a dynamical stochastic process. It is shown that these phase-space transformation equations can be used as an alternative to the Schrodinger equation in the solution of quantum mechanical problems, such as the evolution with time of wave packets, collision problems and the calculation of transition probabilities in perturbed systems; an approximation method is derived for this purpose. The third part, quantum statistics, deals with the phase-space distribution of members of large assemblies, with a view to applications of quantum mechanics to kinetic theories of matter. Finally, the limitations of the theory, its uniqueness and the possibilities of experimental verification are discussed.
2,905 citations