Wigner's friend and continuous time evolution of the state of a closed system and the probabilistic, discontinuous collapse of the state of a system upon measurement. Wigner's friend is therefore directly linked to the measurement problem in quantum mechanics with its famous Schrödinger's cat paradox. The thought experiment posits a friend of Wigner in a laboratory and lets him perform a quantum measurement on a physical system (this could be a spin system or also Schrödinger's cat). This system is assumed to be in a superposition of two distinct states, say, state 0 and state 1 (or "dead" and "alive", in the
Unitary transformation (quantum mechanics) qubit is driven simultaneously at two frequencies, formula_65 and formula_66, for which formula_67. formula_68 In addition, there are many fourth-order terms coupling the modes, but most of them can be neglected. In this experiment, two such terms which will become important are formula_69. (H.c. is shorthand for the Hermitian conjugate.) We can apply a displacement transformation, formula_70, to mode formula_64<nowiki>. For Unitary transformation (quantum mechanics) In quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger equation describes how a system changes with time. It does this by relating changes in the state of system to the energy in the system (given by an operator called