Quantum set theory: quantum conditionals and order of observable

TL;DR

This paper explores how different quantum logical conditionals influence the semantics of quantum set theory, revealing their operational meanings and empirical testability in quantum observables.

Contribution

It develops models of quantum set theory based on three conditionals, clarifies their semantic differences, and links order relations to measurable quantum outcomes.

Findings

Order relations depend on the specific conditional used.

All conditionals satisfy the transfer principle for ZFC theorems.

Order relations have operational meaning in quantum measurements.

Abstract

A difficulty in quantum logic is the well-known arbitrariness in choosing a binary operation for conditional among three principal candidates called the Sasaki, the contrapositive Sasaki, and the relevance conditional, mainly chosen from syntactical grounds. A fundamental problem remains to clarify their semantical differences manifest in operational concepts in quantum theory. Here, we attempt such an analysis through quantum set theory, developing models of quantum set theory built upon quantum logics with those three conditionals, each of which defines different quantum logical truth-value assignment for set theoretical statements. We show that each of them satisfies the transfer principle to determine the truth values of theorems of the ZFC set theory and defines the internal reals bijectively corresponding to the observables of the quantum system under consideration. Then, the truth values of their equality relations are identical irrespective of the chosen conditionals. Interestingly, however, their order relations exhibit a strong dependence on the specific conditional employed, while the order relation attains full truth value if and only if Olson's spectral order relation holds. We further characterize the order relation in terms of experimentally accessible relations for outcomes of successive projective measurements of the corresponding observables, showing that each choice has its own operational meaning with symmetry between the Sasaki and the contrapositive Sasaki conditionals, in contrast to the majority view that favors the Sasaki conditional. Our findings reveal that quantum set theory yields empirically testable predictions concerning state-dependent binary relations between quantum observables, thereby extending Born's probabilistic interpretation from propositions to relations.