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Can a quantum state over time resemble a quantum state at a single time?

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arxiv 1607.03637 v2 pith:7BX2IHTC submitted 2016-07-13 quant-ph

Can a quantum state over time resemble a quantum state at a single time?

classification quant-ph
keywords statetimejointquantumappropriatecompositeconstructiondropped
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Standard quantum theory represents a composite system at a given time by a joint state, but it does not prescribe a joint state for a composite of systems at different times. If a more even-handed treatment of space and time is possible, then such a joint state should be definable, and one might expect it to satisfy the following five conditions: that it is a Hermitian operator on the tensor product of the single-time Hilbert spaces; that it represents probabilistic mixing appropriately; that it has the appropriate classical limit; that it has the appropriate single-time marginals; that composing over multiple time-steps is associative. We show that no construction satisfies all these requirements. If an even-handed treatment of space and time is possible, therefore, one or more axioms must be dropped. In particular, if Hermiticity is dropped, then we show that the construction is fixed uniquely up to an ordering convention.

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