An Alternative Foundation of Quantum Theory

• Published in: Foundations of physics 2024-02, Vol.54 (1), Article 3
• Main Author: Helland, Inge S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Accessibility; Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Classical Mechanics; Eigenvalues; Group communication; Hilbert space; History and Philosophical Foundations of Physics; Operators (mathematics); Philosophy of Science; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum Physics; Quantum theory; Relativity Theory; Statistical Physics and Dynamical Systems
• ISSN: 0015-9018; 1572-9516
• DOI: 10.1007/s10701-023-00735-5

A new approach to quantum theory is proposed in this paper. The basis is taken to be theoretical variables, variables that may be accessible or inaccessible, i.e., it may be possible or impossible for an observer to assign arbitrarily sharp numerical values to them. In an epistemic process, the accessible variables are just ideal observations connected to an observer or to some communicating observers. Group actions are defined on these variables, and group representation theory is the basis for developing the Hilbert space formalism here. Operators corresponding to accessible theoretical variables are derived, and in the discrete case, it is proved that the possible physical values are the eigenvalues of these operators. The focus of the paper is some mathematical theorems paving the ground for the proposed foundation of quantum theory. It is shown here that the groups and transformations needed in this approach can be constructed explicitly in the case where the accessible variables are finite-dimensional. This simplifies the theory considerably: To reproduce the Hilbert space formulation, it is enough to assume the existence of two complementary variables. The interpretation inferred from the proposed foundation here may be called a general epistemic interpretation of quantum theory. A special case of this interpretation is QBism; it also has a relationship to several other interpretations.