Abstract
The term measurement in general means a way of determining or reading the value of a particular property associated with an individual system. In classical physics the perturbation induced by the interaction between a measured system and a measuring apparatus can be made as small as desired. In other words the principles of classical physics allow us to know the current state of a system with an arbitrarily small disturbance; this may be called noninvasive measurements in classical physics. This is not true however in quantum physics, essentially because of the following generic feature: If two systems temporarily interact, even after the interaction is over, the composite system described quantum mechanically is inevitably left in an entangled state. This means that the joint wave function is not just a product of wave functions associated with each system. This is true whatever the strength and duration of the interaction in question—even if one of the systems involved is macroscopic (in the usual sense of a system made up of a large number of microphysical constituents). For reasons discussed in this chapter, this feature lies at the heart of a fundamental problem plaguing an attempt to provide a fully coherent quantum mechanical account of a measurement process.
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Home, D. (1997). Quantum Measurement Paradox. In: Conceptual Foundations of Quantum Physics. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-9808-1_2
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