Posted by
Russell Standish on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Re-vol-97-issue-15-reaction-tp6564463.html
On Fri, Jul 08, 2011 at 10:49:39AM -0600, peggy miller wrote:
> Hi -- reacting to quantum mechanics discussion.
> Question -- I probably need to go back and reread my quantum and complexity
> books, but asking anyway -- I can accept quantum particles gain a state when
> being measured, but that only shows the influence of observation on quantum
> particles. How do we prove that they have "no state" when not being
> observed? Maybe they are observed by something else, or reacting to other
> influences causing an existence and behavior that we simply call "no state".
>
>
Your terminology of "state" here is confusing and non-standard. All
quantum particles have state, which is a vector in a Hilbert space (eg
a wavefunction). When a measurement is performed, afterwards the
particle's state is aligned with one of the eigenvectors of the
measurement operator, which corresponds to a particular classical outcome.
--
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