A finite-resources description of a measurement process and its implications for the "Wigner's Friend" scenario

Abstract

Quantum mechanics started out as a theory to describe the smallest scales of energy in Nature. After a hundred years of development it is now routinely employed to describe, among others, quantum computers with thousands of qubits. This tremendous progress turns the debate of foundational questions into a technological imperative. In what follows we introduce a model of a quantum measurement process that consistently includes the impact of having access only to finite resources when describing a macroscopic system, like a measurement apparatus. Leveraging modern tools from equilibration of closed systems and typicality, we show how the measurement collapse can be seen as an effective description of a closed dynamics, of which we do not know all its details. Our model is then exploited to address the ``Wigner Friend Scenario'', and we observe that an agreement is reached when both Wigner and his friend acknowledge their finite resources perspective and describe the measurement process accordingly.

6+3 pages. v2: Major improvements. The measurement model was generalized, and all results are now derived analytically. Comments are welcome