Date of Award

1-1-2014

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

College/School/Department

Department of Physics

Content Description

1 online resource (viii, 131 pages)

Dissertation/Thesis Chair

Ariel Caticha

Committee Members

Carlo Caffaro, Akira Inomata, Kevin H Knuth, Philip Goyal

Keywords

Curved Spaces, Entropic Dynamics, Maximum Entropy, Momentum, Quantum Theory, Spin, Rotational motion, Quantum entropy, Momentum (Mechanics), Quantum theory, Rotation, rotation

Subject Categories

Other Physics | Physics | Quantum Physics

Abstract

We study quantum theory as an example of entropic inference. Our goal is to remove conceptual difficulties that arise in quantum mechanics. Since probability is a common feature of quantum theory and of any inference problem, we briefly introduce probability theory and the entropic methods to update probabilities when new information becomes available. Nelson's stochastic mechanics and Caticha's derivation of quantum theory are discussed in the subsequent chapters. Our first goal is to understand momentum and angular momentum within an entropic dynamics framework and to derive the corresponding uncertainty relations. In this framework momentum is an epistemic concept -- it is not an attribute of the particle but of the probability distributions. We also show that the Heisenberg's uncertainty relation is an osmotic effect. Next we explore the entropic analog of angular momentum. Just like linear momentum, angular momentum is also expressed in purely informational terms.

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