Infinite and finite Gleason’s theorems and the logic of indeterminacy
- 1 January 1998
- journal article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Journal of Mathematical Physics
- Vol. 39 (1) , 218-228
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.532334
Abstract
In the first half of the paper I prove Gleason’s lemma: Every non-negative frame function on the set of rays in is continuous. This is the central and most difficult part of Gleason’s theorem. The proof is a reconstruction of Gleason’s idea in terms of orthogonality graphs. The result is a demonstration that this theorem is actually combinatorial in nature. It depends only on a finite graph structure. In the second half of the paper I use the graph construction to obtain results about probability distributions (non-negative frame functions with weight one) on finite sets of rays. For example, given any two distinct nonorthogonal rays a and b, I construct a finite set of rays Γ that contains them, and has the following property: No probability distribution on Γ assigns both a and b a truth value (probability zero or one) unless they are both false. Thus the principle of indeterminacy turns into a theorem of propositional quantum logic (or partial Boolean algebras).
Keywords
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