Higher Seminar in Philosophy of Science: Gábor Szabó Hofer (Budapest)
Seminar
Date:Friday 16 May 2025
Time:15.15 – 17.00
Location:D700
Operational equivalence and causal structure
Abstract
In this talk, I will explore some consequences of abandoning operational equivalence in quantum mechanics. Two measurements are operationally equivalent if they yield the same distribution of outcomes in every quantum state and hence are represented by the same operator.
I will show that the ontological models for quantum mechanics — and more generally, for any operational theory — sensitively depend on which measurement we choose from the class of operationally equivalent measurements.
To this goal, I will take first three examples — a classical theory, the EPR-Bell scenario and the Popescu-Rochrlich box; then realize each example by two different operational theories — one with a trivial and another with a non-trivial compatibility structure; and finally compare the ontological models for the different theories with respect to their causal structure, contextuality, and fine-tuning.
