Talk:Mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics

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Absurdity?[edit]

Is it just me, but is this Quantum Mechanics theory is simply a way to describe what Physicists can't be certain of? And regarding the probability of popping up of anti-matter and matter, then would that also mean that it is possible (although highly improbable) that one day I'll see myself popping out of nowhere and "exploding" to balance out the mathematical equation?

I highly respects Einstein's stance on Quantum Mechanics. So I don't believe in this. But I'd like to see a more simplified summary so that even clerks, like Einstein, can engage in the discussion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 210.4.96.72 (talk) 07:56, 11 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Summary table[edit]

what do people think of adding this summary table? someone wrote it for the List of elementary physics formulae article. I didn't wan't to completley delete it as its someone else's work and could have a place in the right article.

Postulate 1: State of a system	A system is completely specified at any one time by a Hilbert space vector.
Postulate 2: Observables of a system	A measurable quantity corresponds to an operator with eigenvectors spanning the space.
Postulate 3: Observation of a system	Measuring a system applies the observable's operator to the system and the system collapses into the observed eigenvector.
Postulate 4: Probabilistic result of measurement	The probability of observing an eigenvector is derived from the square of its wavefunction.
Postulate 5: Time evolution of a system	The way the wavefunction evolves over time is determined by Schrödinger's equation.

I really don't mind what the answer is by the way - its not my table:

$|\mathrm {answer} \rangle =y|\mathrm {yes} \rangle +n|\mathrm {no} \rangle ,\,\!$

just thought I would make the proposal.

F=q(E+v^B) (talk) 21:38, 24 November 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by F=q(E+v^B) (talk • contribs) [reply]

Observations[edit]

I just wanted to point out a couple difficulties I am having with this article:

It's not clear to me what the scope of this article is with respect to quantum mechanics versus quantum field theory. Is the article trying to capture the formalisms for both? Could there be a separate article for the formalisms of QFT? They seem to run together in the article, and IMO, it makes the article less succinct than it could be.
In a similar way, the article seems to be conflicted about whether it should describe interpretations of quantum mechanics. My feeling is that this article is about the formalisms, so interpretations are out of scope, except in passing. I believe there are already articles about interpretations, so why not shift the interpretational concerns to those articles?

Postulates cleanup[edit]

Many thanks to User:GravitonsAndGraviolis for cleaning up the postulates. It was a mess of postulates, theorems, definitions, and interpretations, and now it its actually a list of the postulates used in the traditional axiomatization. Tercer (talk) 09:32, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the postulates are adequately cited. For the whole collection, there is the statement: "The following summary of the mathematical framework of quantum mechanics can be partly traced back to the Dirac–von Neumann axioms." (citing Cohen-Tannoudji, Claude (2019)) and for the composite system postulate, there is a reference to Jauch, J. M.; Wigner, E. P.; Yanase, M. M. (1997). Apart perhaps from the composite system postulate, the postulates seem to have been formulated by wikipedians, rather than cited by wikipedians from primary or secondary sources. This strikes me as original research WP:NOR. 86.159.18.215 (talk) 11:50, 21 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]