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Incompatibility of deterministic underlying states with a counterfactual account of Lüders' rule

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jonte HanceORCiD

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Abstract

In this work, we show that a counterfactual account of Lüders' rule—which we argue is naturally implied by the mathematical structure of the rule itself—rules out underlying-state models of quantum mechanics (a type of hidden-variable model, typically used in the contextuality and nonlocality literature, where quantum states are treated as probability measures over “better-defined states”). This incompatibility arises because the counterfactual update requires ontological models to update their states according to conditional probability, which in turn establishes an equivalence between compatibility and the existence of such models.

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Author(s): Tezzin A, Amaral B, Hance JR

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Physical Review A

Year: 2025

Volume: 112

Issue: 5

Print publication date: 01/11/2025

Online publication date: 10/11/2025

Acceptance date: 16/10/2025

Date deposited: 11/11/2025

ISSN (print): 2469-9926

ISSN (electronic): 2469-9934

Publisher: American Physical Society

URL: https://doi.org/10.1103/mrqr-sdyf

DOI: 10.1103/mrqr-sdyf

Data Access Statement: No data were created or analyzed in this study.

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