Draft:Gregg Jaeger

Gregg Jaeger is a physicist and philosopher at Boston University specializing in the foundations of quantum theory, who has also made significant contributions to the history of science...

Jaeger is best known for his research into quantum interference that has provided a quantitative basis for the previously qualitative notions of wave-particle duality and quantum holism, which he has clarified by providing quantitative complementarity relations. He has also investigated the ontology of quantum field theory via analyses of the notion of the elementary particle and virtual particle and their theoretically demonstrable or observable attributes. These lines of research are examples of the method of experimental metaphysics, the investigation of metaphysical aspects of science through the discovery of specific relevant scientific results. Jaeger has contributed to quantum information science by quantifying the effect of environmental influences on the quantum properties of physical systems, in particular, the sudden death of quantum entanglement and of Bell inequality violation in systems both of several qubits and pairs of coherent states, and has applied his theoretical work to the practices of quantum cryptography and quantum computing. Philosophically, Jaeger has been critical of the thesis that information is ontologically prior to the physical, that is, the it from bit thesis connected with the Participatory Anthropic Principle, as well as the idea of digital physics (the universe as a computer). His work in the history of science has focused on 20th-century physics. He publishes in physics, the philosophy and history of science, and population genetics; he has authored several books on the foundations of quantum theory, quantum information, the philosophy of physics, and quantum metrology. .

Jaeger was the primary subject of a 2020 article on the notion of the virtual particle in Vice magazine.

Early life and education
Jaeger received three independent B.Sc. degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Mathematics, Philosophy, and Physics simultaneously. He completed his Ph.D. in Physics under the supervision of the physicist and philosopher Abner Shimony. Jaeger's postdoctoral work was carried out at MIT's Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology (in history of science) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (in experimental quantum optics).

Complementarity and entangled states in quantum physics
Jaeger's research on quantum complementarity and quantum entanglement in quantum physics  has been cited in thousands of articles in peer-reviewed academic journals,   as well as in a number of advanced books and monographs on quantum physics.

Distinction between two non-orthogonal quantum states
Together with Shimony, Jaeger provided a derivation of the optimal distinguishability between two non-orthogonal quantum states, including of qubits when entanglement with the environment is accessible as a resource, demonstrating it to be equal to the Holevo bound on accessible information. This was done using an approach to distinguishability as a classification problem, an approach motivated by von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.

The Ehrenfest classification of phase transitions
Jaeger wrote the definitive history of the Ehrenfest classification of phase transitions in matter. The classification of general types of transition between phases of matter is foundational to much of the thermodynamical study of critical phenomena. It arose following the discovery in 1932 of the “Lambda transition,” a “jump” discontinuity in the curve giving the temperature dependence of the specific heat of helium at a critical value, which Ehrenfest took as the basis for naming phase transitions on the basis of free energy behavior by various "orders." The publication providing this classification was the last of Paul Ehrenfest's life. Jaeger's comprehensive history of the classification traces its evolution after its introduction both in time and in various languages of Europe and the United States before English became a scientific lingua franca, and exhibits and traces its differential impact across time, languages, and regions.

Selected Bibliography

 * Books




 * Book chapters


 * Jaeger, Gregg. Measurement and macroscopicity: Overcoming conceptual imprecision in quantum measurement theory. In


 * Jaeger, Gregg. Clockwork Rebooted: Is the Universe a Computer? In:


 * Journal articles























External links section
Gregg Jaeger's Professional Homepage: