Partial observables

By Carlo Rovelli. 2001

338 citations recorded by the source corpus.

I discuss the distinction between the notion of partial observable and the notion of complete observable. Mixing up the two is frequently a source of confusion. The distinction bears on several issues related to observability, such as (i) whether time is an observable in quantum mechanics, (ii) what are the observables in general relativity, (iii) whether physical observables should or should not commute with the Wheeler-DeWitt operator in quantum gravity. I argue that the extended conﬁguration space has a direct physical interpretation, as the space of the partial observables. This space plays a central role in the structure of classical and quantum mechanics and the clariﬁcation of its physical meaning sheds light on this structure, particularly in the context of general covariant physics.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0cb8d815f82a1f8384c039e1a49f98c00ab26295

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Citations in the corpus

Loop quantum gravity: an outside view (2005, background): “ce formalism of standard quantum mechanics is really the correct mathematical framework for quantum gravity. Over the past decades, there has been slow but steady progress on several fronts (see e.g. [16, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37] and references therein), but it is probably fair to say that we are”
Partial and complete observables for Hamiltonian constrained systems (2004, methodology): “So for the spatial diffeomorphism group we recover the complete observables used in [18–21].”
Disappearance of the black hole singularity in loop quantum gravity (2004, background): “The main results of loop quantum gravity [3], indeed, are the quantization of area and volume partial observables [4], which suggest that in the complete theory there cannot be spacetime points with infinity matter density.”
“Forget time” (2009, background): “[9] C Rovelli, “Partial observables”, Phy Rev D65 (2002) 124013; gr-qc/0110035.”
Bulk and transhorizon measurements in AdS/CFT (2012, background): “There are also senses in which locality fails in 0+1 (quantum mechanical) systems with time-reparametrization invariance, though these are somewhat more subtle [43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48].”
Loop Quantum Gravity (2003, background): “There discreteness is recognized as always associated to the spectra of the partial observables [260].”
Introduction to Loop Quantum Cosmology (2011, methodology): “ng method, or [144] as an example of the second method. 18 K. Banerjee, G. Calcagni and M. Martn-Benito This allows us to define Dirac observables \in evolution", namely relational observables [101, 102,169], and in turn, to interpret the physical results. Let us note first that, in the classic”
FUNDAMENTAL STRUCTURE OF LOOP QUANTUM GRAVITY (2005, methodology): “However, using the concepts of partial and complete observables [121][115 22], a systematic”
Observables in effective gravity (2005, methodology): “In section three we investigate a broad class of diffeomorphism-invariant quantities that we expect to serve as observables in gravitational physics in a manner similar to references [5,6,14-21].”
Ponzano–Regge model revisited: I. Gauge fixing, observables and interacting spinning particles (2004, neutral): “However the J(v)’s or Xe, Qe(f) are not conserved and we could use one of them as a clock in order to define a relational time [16, 49].”