Existence of an information unit as a postulate of quantum theory

TLDR

Despite quantum theory’s success, its significance and meaning remain debated, and its standard postulates lack clear physical interpretation, making it hard to assess their implications for the physical world. The article aims to reformulate quantum theory using four simple, physically intuitive postulates. The authors achieve this by proving that quantum theory can be expressed through these four postulates. The new postulates reveal hidden connections between physics and information, supporting Wheeler’s “it from bit” hypothesis.

Abstract

Significance Despite the enormous success of quantum theory, its significance and meaning are still being debated. In particular, the standard postulates of quantum theory are abstract mathematical statements in terms of complex vectors, self-adjoint operators, etc., and as such they lack a clear physical interpretation. For this reason, it is difficult to assess what they say about the structure of the physical world. In this article, we prove that quantum theory can be formulated through four very simple postulates, each having a direct physical and intuitive meaning. Also, our postulates unveil some connections between physics and information that remain hidden in the standard postulates, thus supporting Wheeler’s hypothesis “it from bit.”