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A Comparison of Two Topos-Theoretic Approaches to Quantum Theory

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to compare the two topos-theoretic approaches to quantum mechanics that may be found in the literature to date. The first approach, which we will call the contravariant approach, was originally proposed by Isham and Butterfield, and was later extended by Döring and Isham. The second approach, which we will call the covariant approach, was developed by Heunen, Landsman and Spitters.

Motivated by coarse-graining and the Kochen-Specker theorem, the contravariant approach uses the topos of presheaves on a specific context category, defined as the poset of commutative von Neumann subalgebras of some given von Neumann algebra. In particular, the approach uses the spectral presheaf. The intuitionistic logic of this approach is given by the (complete) Heyting algebra of closed open subobjects of the spectral presheaf. We show that this Heyting algebra is, in a natural way, a locale in the ambient topos, and compare this locale with the internal Gelfand spectrum of the covariant approach.

In the covariant approach, a non-commutative C*-algebra (in the topos Set) defines a commutative C*-algebra internal to the topos of covariant functors from the context category to the category of sets. We give an explicit description of the internal Gelfand spectrum of this commutative C*-algebra, from which it follows that the external spectrum is spatial.

Using the daseinisation of self-adjoint operators from the contravariant approach, we give a new definition of the daseinisation arrow in the covariant approach and compare it with the original version. States and state-proposition pairing in both approaches are compared. We also investigate the physical interpretation of the covariant approach.

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  1. Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Institute for Mathematics, Astrophysics, and Particle Physics, Heyendaalseweg 135, 6525 AJ, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Sander A. M. Wolters

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Communicated by Y. Kawahigashi

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Wolters, S.A.M. A Comparison of Two Topos-Theoretic Approaches to Quantum Theory. Commun. Math. Phys. 317, 3–53 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00220-012-1652-3

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