95 research outputs found
Extended Representations of Observables and States for a Noncontextual Reinterpretation of QM
A crucial and problematical feature of quantum mechanics (QM) is
nonobjectivity of properties. The ESR model restores objectivity reinterpreting
quantum probabilities as conditional on detection and embodying the
mathematical formalism of QM into a broader noncontextual (hence local)
framework. We propose here an improved presentation of the ESR model containing
a more complete mathematical representation of the basic entities of the model.
We also extend the model to mixtures showing that the mathematical
representations of proper mixtures does not coincide with the mathematical
representation of mixtures provided by QM, while the representation of improper
mixtures does. This feature of the ESR model entails that some interpretative
problems raising in QM when dealing with mixtures are avoided. From an
empirical point of view the predictions of the ESR model depend on some
parameters which may be such that they are very close to the predictions of QM
in most cases. But the nonstandard representation of proper mixtures allows us
to propose the scheme of an experiment that could check whether the predictions
of QM or the predictions of the ESR model are correct.Comment: 17 pages, standard latex. Extensively revised versio
The antioxidant capacity of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) berries depends on the genotype and harvest time
Berries of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) are characterized by increasing popularity due to their presumable healtheffects. The aim of this study was to compare the antioxidant capacity and total polyphenolic content in the berries of six Hungarian grown sea buckthorn genotypes and characterize the genetic variability in this trait. The harvest time of sea buckthorn berries affects the antioxidant capacity and total phenolic contents in berries of three popular cultivars of German origin. Berries harvested in October had higher antioxidant capacity compared with those harvested one month later. The extent of the difference was genotype-specific. Our analysis revealed a nearly 3-fold difference between the lowest and highest antioxidant capacities of the 6 tested genotypes with âLeikoraâ showing the highest ferric reducing antioxidant power and total phenolic content. The TEAC values ranged between 1.76 and 3.13 mmol Trolox/100g fresh weight with PetĆ 1 and âFruganaâ having the highest values. The results presented in this study demonstrated that Hippophae rhamnoides berries possess in vitro antioxidant activity strongly determined by genotype but also influenced by harvest time
Semantic distillation: a method for clustering objects by their contextual specificity
Techniques for data-mining, latent semantic analysis, contextual search of
databases, etc. have long ago been developed by computer scientists working on
information retrieval (IR). Experimental scientists, from all disciplines,
having to analyse large collections of raw experimental data (astronomical,
physical, biological, etc.) have developed powerful methods for their
statistical analysis and for clustering, categorising, and classifying objects.
Finally, physicists have developed a theory of quantum measurement, unifying
the logical, algebraic, and probabilistic aspects of queries into a single
formalism. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to show that when
formulated at an abstract level, problems from IR, from statistical data
analysis, and from physical measurement theories are very similar and hence can
profitably be cross-fertilised, and, secondly, to propose a novel method of
fuzzy hierarchical clustering, termed \textit{semantic distillation} --
strongly inspired from the theory of quantum measurement --, we developed to
analyse raw data coming from various types of experiments on DNA arrays. We
illustrate the method by analysing DNA arrays experiments and clustering the
genes of the array according to their specificity.Comment: Accepted for publication in Studies in Computational Intelligence,
Springer-Verla
Bohrification of operator algebras and quantum logic
Following Birkhoff and von Neumann, quantum logic has traditionally been
based on the lattice of closed linear subspaces of some Hilbert space, or, more
generally, on the lattice of projections in a von Neumann algebra A.
Unfortunately, the logical interpretation of these lattices is impaired by
their nondistributivity and by various other problems. We show that a possible
resolution of these difficulties, suggested by the ideas of Bohr, emerges if
instead of single projections one considers elementary propositions to be
families of projections indexed by a partially ordered set C(A) of appropriate
commutative subalgebras of A. In fact, to achieve both maximal generality and
ease of use within topos theory, we assume that A is a so-called Rickart
C*-algebra and that C(A) consists of all unital commutative Rickart
C*-subalgebras of A. Such families of projections form a Heyting algebra in a
natural way, so that the associated propositional logic is intuitionistic:
distributivity is recovered at the expense of the law of the excluded middle.
Subsequently, generalizing an earlier computation for n-by-n matrices, we
prove that the Heyting algebra thus associated to A arises as a basis for the
internal Gelfand spectrum (in the sense of Banaschewski-Mulvey) of the
"Bohrification" of A, which is a commutative Rickart C*-algebra in the topos of
functors from C(A) to the category of sets. We explain the relationship of this
construction to partial Boolean algebras and Bruns-Lakser completions. Finally,
we establish a connection between probability measure on the lattice of
projections on a Hilbert space H and probability valuations on the internal
Gelfand spectrum of A for A = B(H).Comment: 31 page
Causal categories: relativistically interacting processes
A symmetric monoidal category naturally arises as the mathematical structure
that organizes physical systems, processes, and composition thereof, both
sequentially and in parallel. This structure admits a purely graphical
calculus. This paper is concerned with the encoding of a fixed causal structure
within a symmetric monoidal category: causal dependencies will correspond to
topological connectedness in the graphical language. We show that correlations,
either classical or quantum, force terminality of the tensor unit. We also show
that well-definedness of the concept of a global state forces the monoidal
product to be only partially defined, which in turn results in a relativistic
covariance theorem. Except for these assumptions, at no stage do we assume
anything more than purely compositional symmetric-monoidal categorical
structure. We cast these two structural results in terms of a mathematical
entity, which we call a `causal category'. We provide methods of constructing
causal categories, and we study the consequences of these methods for the
general framework of categorical quantum mechanics.Comment: 43 pages, lots of figure
Schreier type theorems for bicrossed products
We prove that the bicrossed product of two groups is a quotient of the
pushout of two semidirect products. A matched pair of groups is deformed using a combinatorial datum consisting of
an automorphism of , a permutation of the set and a
transition map in order to obtain a new matched pair such that there exist an -invariant
isomorphism of groups . Moreover, if we fix the group and the automorphism
\sigma \in \Aut(H) then any -invariant isomorphism between two
arbitrary bicrossed product of groups is obtained in a unique way by the above
deformation method. As applications two Schreier type classification theorems
for bicrossed product of groups are given.Comment: 21 pages, final version to appear in Central European J. Mat
Intuitionistic quantum logic of an n-level system
A decade ago, Isham and Butterfield proposed a topos-theoretic approach to
quantum mechanics, which meanwhile has been extended by Doering and Isham so as
to provide a new mathematical foundation for all of physics. Last year, three
of the present authors redeveloped and refined these ideas by combining the
C*-algebraic approach to quantum theory with the so-called internal language of
topos theory (see arXiv:0709.4364). The goal of the present paper is to
illustrate our abstract setup through the concrete example of the C*-algebra of
complex n by n matrices. This leads to an explicit expression for the pointfree
quantum phase space and the associated logical structure and Gelfand transform
of an n-level system. We also determine the pertinent non-probabilisitic
state-proposition pairing (or valuation) and give a very natural
topos-theoretic reformulation of the Kochen--Specker Theorem. The essential
point is that the logical structure of a quantum n-level system turns out to be
intuitionistic, which means that it is distributive but fails to satisfy the
law of the excluded middle (both in opposition to the usual quantum logic).Comment: 26 page
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