The Simpson’s paradox in quantum mechanics

Abstract

In probability and statistics, the Simpson’s paradox is a paradox in which a trend that appears in different groups of data disappears when these groups are combined, while the reverse trend appears for the aggregate data. In this paper, we give some results about the occurrence of the Simpson’s paradox in quantum mechanics. In particular, we prove that the Simpson’s paradox occurs for solutions of the quantum harmonic oscillator both in the stationary case and in the non-stationary case. In the non-stationary case, the Simpson’s paradox is persistent: if it occurs at any time t=t∼, then it occurs at any time t≠t∼. Moreover, we prove that the Simpson’s paradox is not an isolated phenomenon, namely, that, close to initial data for which it occurs, there are lots of initial data (a open neighborhood), for which it still occurs. Differently from the case of the quantum harmonic oscillator, we also prove that the paradox appears (asymptotically) in the context of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation but at intermittent times.