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Blake Stacey

Blake Staceyblake-stacey

Aug 14 2019 03:25 UTC
Jul 26 2019 02:00 UTC
Blake Stacey published Lüders Channels and SIC Existence
The Lüders rule provides a way to define a quantum channel given a quantum measurement. Using this construction, we establish an if-and-only-if condition for the existence of a $d$-dimensional Symmetric Informationally Complete quantum measurement (a SIC) in terms of a particular depolarizing channel. Moreover, the channel in question satisfies two entropic optimality criteria.
Jul 10 2019 02:00 UTC
Blake Stacey published On QBism and Assumption (Q)
I correct two misapprehensions, one historical and one conceptual, in the recent literature on extensions of the Wigner's Friend thought-experiment. Perhaps fittingly, both concern the accurate description of some quantum physicists' beliefs by others.
Jul 05 2019 02:00 UTC
I summarize a research program that aims to reconstruct quantum theory from a fundamental physical principle that, while a quantum system has no intrinsic hidden variables, it can be understood using a reference measurement. This program reduces the physical question of why the quantum formalism is empirically successful to the mathematical question of why complete sets of equiangular lines appear to exist in complex vector spaces when they do not exist in real ones. My primary goal is to clarify motivations, rather than to present a closed book of numbered theorems, and consequently the discussion is more in the manner of a colloquium than a PRL.
Jul 01 2019 20:58 UTC

I'm happy to see that the bibliography I compiled for [arXiv:1703.07901][1] is becoming more and more out of date!

[1]: https://scirate.com/arxiv/1703.07901

Jun 14 2019 02:00 UTC
Coherence, treated as a resource in quantum information theory, is a basis-dependent quantity. Looking for states that have constant coherence under canonical changes of basis yields highly symmetric structures in state space. For the case of a qubit, we find an easy construction of qubit SICs (Symmetric Informationally Complete POVMs). SICs in dimension 3 and 8 are also shown to be equicoherent.
Jun 04 2019 13:37 UTC

Reference 2, which is used to define QBism, is to Caves, Fuchs and Schack (2002). This is an incorrect attribution; Caves does not call himself a QBist and disagrees with some turns that the other two authors made in the following years. (One might call it a "Quantum Bayesian"
paper, that term being older and more general, encompassing some writings of Bub and Pitowsky and even old Usenet posts of John Baez, for example. The more specific term hit the arXiv in 2010.) The canonical conceptual statement of QBism is Fuchs, Mermin and Schack (2014). What that article says about Wigner's Friend applies to Frauchiger--Renner and all the other recent variations.

May 25 2019 18:30 UTC
May 18 2019 22:53 UTC

Podolsky is like banana: One knows how to spell it, but one does not know how to stop.

Apr 21 2019 20:11 UTC
Blake Stacey commented on Uncertainty from Heisenberg to Today

There is a more recent article by Appleby, following up on the one that is Ref. 1 in your paper, which may be pertinent: arXiv:1602.09002.

Apr 15 2019 23:00 UTC
Blake Stacey commented on Uncertainty from Heisenberg to Today

I loved the remark that "Heisenberg in his later years expresses his appreciation of the mathematical side by claiming that it was his own work in the first place."

Subtle typo on page 3: "but new very little about matrices". And another on page 16: "change slowly in phases space". Also, "property-defined" should be "properly-defined", I think, though one connotation of classical is often having fully-defined intrinsic properties. Page 25: "a projective measurements". Page 31: "Poppers" should be "Popper's".

Mar 19 2019 14:16 UTC