Quantum foundations concerns the conceptual and mathematical underpinnings of quantum theory. In particular, we search for novel quantum effects, consider how to interpret the formalism, ask where the formalism comes from, and how we might modify it. Research at Perimeter Institute is particularly concerned with reconstructing quantum theory from more natural postulates and reformulating the theory in ways that elucidate its conceptual structure. Research in the foundations of quantum theory naturally interfaces with research in quantum information and quantum gravity.
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Format results
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Time, Causality, and the Structure of Quantum Theory Mini-Course, Apr 21 - May 13, 2026
This course will cover the basics from my book, https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.12076. It is about operational probabilistic theories. The standard approach in such theories is, implicitly, from a time forward perspective. On the other hand, we will mostly take a time symmetric perspective. The course -
Quantum Foundations (Elective), PHYS 639, January 5 - February 6, 2026
This course will explain why textbook quantum “theory” is merely a mathematical recipe rather than a proper physical theory. It will then cover the most serious obstacles to fixing this problem and to providing a clear metaphysics underpinning the mathematics of quantum theory. We will focus on key -
Quantum Measurement and Continuous Markov Processes Mini-Course, Oct 27 - Dec 11, 2025
This series is a crash course introduction to a handful of advanced topics designed to tackle the general problem of how to engineer Positive Operator-Valued Measures (POVMs) using observable building blocks, the so-called Instrument Manifold Program. This program emerged from a recent fundamental -
Introduction to Categorical Probability Mini-Course, Oct 1-7, 2025
In the last few years, a new perspective on probabilistic reasoning has been extensively developed with the help of tools from category theory. The idea is to shift focus from the measure-theoretic details to structural properties of information flow in the presence of uncertainty - independence -
Causal Inference (Elective), PHYS 777, March 31 - May 2, 2025
Can the effectiveness of a medical treatment be determined without the expense of a randomized controlled trial? Can the impact of a new policy be disentangled from other factors that happen to vary at the same time? Questions such as these are the purview of the field of causal inference, a general -
Quantum Foundations (Elective), PHYS 639, January 6 - February 5, 2025
This course will cover the basics of Quantum Foundations under three main headings. Part I – Novel effects in Quantum Theory. A number of interesting quantum effects will be considered. Interferometers: Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Elitzur-Vaidman bomb tester, The quantum-Zeno effect. The no cloning -
Causalworlds
Understanding causality is fundamental to science and inspires wide-ranging applications, yet there are several distinct notions of causation. Recently, there have been important developments on the role of causality in quantum physics, relativistic physics and their interplay. These have unearthed -
Quantum Theory (Core), PHYS 605, September 3 – October 4, 2024
The aim of the first part is to present a brief overview of selected topics in quantum theory. Schrodinger, Heisenberg and Interaction picture is discussed and applied to study time evolution. Density matrix and Feynman path integral are introduced. The second part of the course derives the Feynman -
GPTs and the probabilistic foundations of quantum theory - mini-course
Classical probability theory makes the (mostly, tacit) assumption that any two random experiments can be performed jointly. This assumption seems to fail in quantum theory. A rapidly growing literature seeks to understand QM by placing it in a much broader mathematical landscape of ``generalized -
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Causal Inference & Quantum Foundations Workshop
Recently we have seen exciting results at the intersection of quantum foundations and the statistical analysis of causal hypotheses by virtue of the centrality of latent variable models to both fields. In this workshop we will explore how academics from both sides can move the shared frontiers -