# The assumptions underlying the consistent-amplitude approach to quantum theory

## Abstract

In this note I expand further on the main assumptions leading to the consistent-amplitude approach to quantum theory and I offer a reply to Jerry Finkelstein’s recent comment (quant-ph/9809017) concerning my argument for the linearity of quantum mechanics (Phys. Rev. A57, 1572 (1998)).

The purpose of this note is twofold: it is intended as a reply to a recent comment made by Jerry Finkelstein  on my work on the consistent-amplitude approach to quantum theory (CAQT)  and, in the process, I will provide a brief overview emphasizing the main assumptions behind the CAQT.

The objective of CAQT has been to justify the formalism of quantum theory in the hope that this would not only clarify the formal connections among the various postulates of quantum theory but also illuminate the issue of how the formalism should be interpreted. In this respect the traditional approach has been to first set up the formalism and then try to find out what it all means. This problem of attributing a physical meaning to mathematical constructs is a notoriously difficult one. A well known ancient example is the theory of probability. There the subject of the mathematical structure of the theory has been settled for a very long time but questions about the actual interpretation – what a probability actually means – remain to this day very controversial. So, rather than take the standard quantum theory as axiomatized, say by von Neumann, and then, append to it an interpretation, the approach I have taken has been to try to build the formalism and its interpretation simultaneously. Thus, the hope is that by the time the formalism is completed, at least some important interpretational issues will have been settled.

I will address Finkelstein’s comment in the context of a very brief summary: CAQT is formulated as the only consistent way to manipulate the amplitudes for quantum processes; the result is the standard quantum theory. We proceed in several steps; effectively, each step represents an assumption. The first and most crucial assumption is a decision about the subject matter. What problem is quantum mechanics trying to solve? We choose a pragmatic, operational approach: statements about a system are identified with those experimental setups designed to test them. Quoting from : “Our goal is to predict the outcomes of experiments and the strategy is to establish a network of relations among setups in the hope that information about some setups might be helpful in making predictions about others.” We find that there are two basic kinds of relations among setups, which we call $`and`$ and $`or`$. These relations or operations represent our idealized ability to build more complex setups out of simpler ones, either by placing them in “series” or in “parallel”. The identification of the $`and/or`$ relations, as well as their properties (associativity, distributivity, etc.) is crucial to establishing the goal and the subject of quantum mechanics. The first assumption is

* The goal of quantum theory is to predict the outcomes of experiments involving setups built from parts connected through $`and`$ and $`or`$.

It is important to emphasize that this quantum theory coincides with the standard Copenhagen quantum theory (see ). The contribution, at this point, has been to make explicit the relations $`and/or`$ which are normally implicit in the Feynman approach.

The next step involves an assumption about the means for handling these relations $`and/or`$ quantitatively:

* We seek a mathematical representation of $`and/or`$ by assigning to each setup $`a`$ a single complex number $`\varphi (a)`$ in such a way that relations among setups translate into relations among the corresponding complex numbers. The requirement that a single complex number be assigned to a setup is a consistency constraint: if there are two different ways to compute $`\varphi (a)`$ the two answers must agree.

Quoting from : “There is no reason why such a representation should exist, but if it does exist, and this is, perhaps, just another instance of the “unusual effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences,” then there is no reason not to take advantage of it.” And again, quoting from : “Why should such a representation exist? It need not, but all of physics consists of representing elements of reality, or relations among these elements, or our information about them, by mathematical objects. The existence of such representations may be mysterious, but it is not surprising; there are too many examples.” The remarkable consequence of the existence of one representation is the theorem that it is always possible to switch to another one equivalent to it and considerably more convenient in which $`and`$ and $`or`$ are respectively represented by multiplication and addition. This is the main result of .

In , anticipating results to be obtained in the later sections of , such as for example, the fact that the time evolution of these complex numbers is given by a linear Schrödinger-like equation and that their modulus squared yields probabilities, I wrote “Complex numbers assigned in this way are called ‘amplitudes”’. In retrospect perhaps this was pedagogically misleading because it suggests that refs.  can be summarized as follows: If one attributes to quantum mechanical amplitudes, not only all those properties to which we have become accustomed, but also the additional requirement that they provide a representation for $`and/or`$ then one finds the Schrödinger equation must be linear or else the theory is inconsistent. Put in this way it is reasonable to conclude as does Finkelstein : “…Thus it is the demand that the amplitudes form a ‘representation’ with which nonlinear theories are inconsistent.” But one should not put it this way: I do not take the amplitudes we all know and append an additional requirement, I take complex numbers which carry no previous burden of preconceived meanings and are totally arbitrary except for the only requirement that they provide a representation of $`and/or`$. To avoid further misconceptions, in the rest of this note, I will refer to these complex numbers after they have been suitably regraded so that the sum and product rules hold, by $`CN`$s. Toward the end I will comment on the implications of the interesting logical possibility that such a representation of $`and/or`$ might not exist.

Thus, $`CN`$s are tools for reasoning that encode information about how one builds complicated setups by combining more elementary ones. Incidentally, as a consequence of the sum and product rules, the time evolution of these $`CN`$s is given by a linear equation, and this allows the introduction of a ‘$`CN`$-function’ (which I will eventually call the ‘wave function’) as a means to codify those features of the setup prior to $`t`$ that are relevant to time evolution after $`t`$. The question of how $`CN`$s or the $`CN`$ -function are used to predict the outcomes of experiments is addressed through an assumption. The general interpretative rule is:

* Suppose the $`CN`$-function of a setup is $`\mathrm{\Psi }\left(t\right)`$ and at time $`t`$ one introduces or removes a filter that blocks out those components of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ characterized by a certain property $`𝒫`$. Suppose further that this modification of the setup has a negligible effect on the evolution of $`\mathrm{\Psi }`$ after $`t`$. Then when the $`CN`$-function is $`\mathrm{\Psi }\left(t\right)`$ property $`𝒫`$ will not be detected. The rule applies to $`CN`$s in general.

The application of this rule requires a criterion to quantify the change in $`CN`$s when setups are modified. In ref.  the criterion adopted was to use the Hilbert norm as the means to measure the distance between $`CN`$-functions. To justify this Hilbert norm we argue that there is a uniquely natural notion of distance in the linear space of $`CN`$-functions; it is given by the Hilbert inner product. The argument exploits the fact that the components out of which setups are built, the filters, already supply us with a notion of orthogonality. In order to fix the inner product an additional assumption is needed. It is a form of the principle of insufficient reason motivated by symmetry :

* If there is no reason to prefer one region of configuration space over another they should be assigned equal a priori weight.

From the assumptions A3 and A4 one can prove that the probability of an outcome in an experiment involving a certain setup is given by the modulus-squared of the corresponding $`CN`$. This is the Born postulate.

The final step in the current state of development of the CAQT is a justification of why the time evolution of the $`CN`$-functions in addition to being linear must also be unitary. For this we must assume :

* The experimental setups about which we wish to make predictions involve no loss of information.

Since the objective of A5 is to specify more precisely what are the experimental setups we are trying to make predictions about, it is in effect contributing to define the subject of quantum theory. It may, therefore, be more appropriate to include A5 as part of A1. In any case, in these setups entropy must be conserved and this implies unitary time evolution. The only subtlety in this last step concerns the identification of the proper entropy; it is the array entropy, not von Neumann’s.

At this point the reader may judge whether the $`CN`$s introduced in the CAQT for the sole purpose of representing $`and/or`$ and which, with rather mild and natural assumptions, have proved to be useful tools in predicting the results of experiments deserve or not to be called ‘amplitudes’. My own inclination is to define amplitudes in this way, i.e., as tools for dealing with $`and/or`$. I regard this definition as being considerably more useful than alternative ones because of the light it sheds on the issue of how amplitudes and wave functions should be interpreted and on various connections among the usual quantum postulates.

As in all physical theories assumptions are unavoidable. An important issue is whether the assumptions are sufficiently natural and compelling that one may not wish to consider abandoning them. A related and somewhat less important issue is that of deciding how many of these assumptions it is legitimate to give up and still insist that the resulting theory be called a “quantum” theory. Some practitioners of quantum theory would insist that theories violating assumption A1 may be “theories” but are not “quantum theories”. Thus, on the question of whether nonlinear quantum theories are consistent or not I wrote : “Non-linear variants of quantum mechanics that preserve the notion of amplitudes violate natural requirements of consistency. The question of whether it is possible to formulate non-linear versions of quantum mechanics should not be formulated as a dynamical question about which non-linear terms one is allowed to add to the Schrödinger equation, but rather it should be phrased as a deeper kinematical question about whether quantum mechanics should be formulated in terms of mathematical objects other than amplitudes and wave functions. However, whatever the nature of those mathematical objects the requirement that they be manipulated in a consistent manner should be maintained.” Naturally, the meaning that I attributed then and now to the words ‘amplitude’ and ‘wave function’ is that of $`CN`$s and $`CN`$-functions.

We conclude with some comments about the interesting possibility that the representation assumed in A2 might not exist. For the purpose of this discussion it is convenient to classify quantum theories into three classes:

* Theories that satisfy both A1 and A2.
* Theories that satisfy A1 but do not satisfy A2.
* Theories that do not satisfy A1.

This covers all possibilities.

The type-(a) theory is conventional quantum theory: its goal is to predict the outcomes of experiments involving setups built from parts connected through $`and`$ and $`or`$, and since there exists a representation of $`and/or`$ there is no reason why one should not take advantage of it to construct a linear quantum theory. Could one, in addition to the linear theory, also build a nonlinear theory and use it to make predictions for these same setups? Perhaps, but the predictions of this non-linear variant would either have to agree with those of the linear theory and be equivalent to it (probably just a change of variables), or else risk being inconsistent. Thus, “nonlinear variants of type-(a) quantum theory are inconsistent”. Of course, there remains a tiny loophole provided by the logical possibility that any of assumptions A3-A5 might not hold.

Theories of type (b) are those which agree with type-(a) theories as to the subject matter but for which no representation of $`and/or`$ exists. These are, I believe, the theories to which Finkelstein might have been referring to (he raises no objections against A1). One thing that can be said about these type-(b) theories is that they must apply to systems that are sufficiently complicated that the linear quantum theory does not exist. The point is that if the linear quantum theory existed it would provide us with a representation for $`and/or`$ in contradiction with the hypothesis that A2 is violated. Notice that the situation here is not that there exists a conceivable linear theory that must however be discarded on the grounds that it disagrees with experiment. The situation is more extreme: the linear theory does not exist. The question then becomes whether the set of type-(b) theories is empty or not: the cases of a single particle and other simple systems are excluded, for quantum fields the situation is not so clear.

Finally, type-(c) theories violate A1 and could very well be nonlinear. These theories include all realistic theories that have the more ambitious goal of providing a direct description of physical reality. Most proposals for nonlinear theories appear to be of this kind. Type-(c) theories also include those that seek the more modest goal of predicting the outcomes of experiments involving setups which however are not built from parts connected through $`and`$ and $`or`$.

My own conclusion is that in the process of achieving consistency for nonlinear quantum theories so much must be abandoned that by the time the resulting nonlinear theory is ‘consistent’ it no longer remains ‘quantum’.

Acknowledgments- I am indebted to C. Rodríguez for valuable discussions and to J. Finkelstein for stimulating correspondence.