English

Completing Quantum Mechanics with Quantized Hidden Variables

Quantum Physics 2015-06-16 v2

Abstract

I explore the possibility that a quantum system S may be described completely by the combination of its standard quantum state ψ|\psi\rangle and a (hidden) quantum state ϕ|\phi\rangle (that lives in the same Hilbert space), such that the outcome of any standard projective measurement on the system S is determined once the two quantum states are specified. I construct an algorithm that retrieves the standard quantum-mechanical probabilities, which depend only on ψ|\psi\rangle, by assuming that the (hidden) quantum state ϕ|\phi\rangle is drawn at random from some fixed probability distribution Pr(.) and by averaging over Pr(.). Contextuality and Bell nonlocality turn out to emerge automatically from this algorithm as soon as the dimension of the Hilbert space of S is larger than 2. If ϕ|\phi\rangle is not completely random, subtle testable deviations from standard quantum mechanics may arise in sequential measurements on single systems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1506.03485,
  title  = {Completing Quantum Mechanics with Quantized Hidden Variables},
  author = {S. J. van Enk},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1506.03485},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

As Michael Hall pointed out to me, the main idea (to use a 2nd quantum state as hidden variable) was discussed by Bohm and Bub in 1966. I found then that two more ideas were anticipated by Mattuck and by Papalilios. I have indicated these anticipations in blue. I leave the manuscript here as it does seem to give more "applications" of the Bohm-Bub model, and it might still lead to other ideas

R2 v1 2026-06-22T09:51:25.544Z