"Wigner's friend" meaning in English

See Wigner's friend in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Proper name

Etymology: Named after Hungarian-American physicist Eugene Wigner, who described the experiment in an article published in 1961. Head templates: {{en-proper noun}} Wigner's friend
  1. (physics, philosophy) The hypothetical observer in a thought experiment in which Wigner, absent when his friend observes the state of a particle (in some versions, Schrödinger's cat) as it collapses from quantum superposition, concludes that both the particle and his friend remain in quantum superposition until Wigner himself learns the result of the observation. Wikipedia link: Wigner's friend Categories (topical): Philosophy, Physics Translations (Translations): Wigners Freund [masculine] (German)

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          "text": "2001, David Lewis, How Many Lives Has Schrödinger's Cat?, Lecture, republished in 2004, Frank Jackson, Graham Priest (editors), Lewisian Themes: The Philosophy of David K. Lewis, page 13,\nThere is no collapse until Wigner comes along, yet because different branches of the previous superposition have acted differently to bring about different branches of Wigner's friend, each branch of Wigner's friend is under the illusion of seeing a sharp state, and thus under an illusion of collapse."
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          "text": "2009, Henry Stapp, Wigner's Friend, Daniel Greenberger, Klaus Hentsche, Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy, Springer, page 857,\nThe second step is to treat Wigner's friend as an unobserved inanimate measuring device that has two states: either it registers the photon, χ₁ or it does not χ₂."
        },
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          "ref": "2016, John G. Cramer, The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions, Springer, page 82",
          "text": "In 1962 Eugene Wigner elaborated on the knowledge issue with his Wigner's Friend paradox, an expansion of the Schrödinger's Cat problem [11]. Wigner replaced the cat with a “friend”, i.e., an intelligent observer and at the same time replaced the hydrocyanic acid mechanism with a less lethal piece of apparatus, e.g., a light bulb that is switched on when a count is recorded.",
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        "The hypothetical observer in a thought experiment in which Wigner, absent when his friend observes the state of a particle (in some versions, Schrödinger's cat) as it collapses from quantum superposition, concludes that both the particle and his friend remain in quantum superposition until Wigner himself learns the result of the observation."
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        },
        {
          "text": "2009, Henry Stapp, Wigner's Friend, Daniel Greenberger, Klaus Hentsche, Compendium of Quantum Physics: Concepts, Experiments, History and Philosophy, Springer, page 857,\nThe second step is to treat Wigner's friend as an unobserved inanimate measuring device that has two states: either it registers the photon, χ₁ or it does not χ₂."
        },
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          "ref": "2016, John G. Cramer, The Quantum Handshake: Entanglement, Nonlocality and Transactions, Springer, page 82",
          "text": "In 1962 Eugene Wigner elaborated on the knowledge issue with his Wigner's Friend paradox, an expansion of the Schrödinger's Cat problem [11]. Wigner replaced the cat with a “friend”, i.e., an intelligent observer and at the same time replaced the hydrocyanic acid mechanism with a less lethal piece of apparatus, e.g., a light bulb that is switched on when a count is recorded.",
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This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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