Physics Department Colloquia |
Events During the Week of March 23rd through March 30th, 2014
Monday, March 24th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Tuesday, March 25th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Wednesday, March 26th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Thursday, March 27th, 2014
- No events scheduled
Friday, March 28th, 2014
- Realism and the epistemic view of quantum states
- Time: 3:30 pm
- Place: 2241 Chamberlin Hall (coffee at 4:30 pm)
- Speaker: Terry Rudolph
- Abstract: The idea that quantum states reflect only an observers knowledge/beliefs/information about the world has a long history. The challenge for an advocate of this position, however, is to identify what we can deduce is "really going on'' out there. There seem to three main paths proponents of the epistemic view have followed in trying to extract such a narrative from quantum theory. I will explain how the most naïve such path--that quantum states can be associated with standard (probabilistic) uncertainty about some (arbitrary) real states of the world--is not tenable under some extremely mild assumptions about how any theory of reality must treat independent experiments. I will then overview the other two paths and what I see as the challenges they face.
- Host: Yavuz