Completing the quantum formalism in a contextually objective framework
Abstract
In standard quantum mechanics (QM), a state vector may belong to infinitely many different orthogonal bases, as soon as the dimension of the Hilbert space is at least three. On the other hand, a complete physical observable (with no degeneracy left) is associated with a -dimensional orthogonal basis of eigenvectors. In an idealized case, measuring again and again will give repeatedly the same result, with the same eigenvalue. Let us call this repeatable result a modality , and the corresponding eigenstate . A question is then: does give a complete description of ? The answer is obviously no, since does not specify the full observable that allowed us to obtain ; hence the physical description given by is incomplete, as claimed by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen in their famous article in 1935. Here we want to spell out this provocative statement, and in particular to answer the questions: if is an incomplete description of , what does it describe ? is it possible to obtain a complete description, maybe algebraic ? Our conclusion is that the incompleteness of standard QM is due to its attempt to describe systems without contexts, whereas both are always required, even if they can be separated outside the measurement periods.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2003.03121,
title = {Completing the quantum formalism in a contextually objective framework},
author = {Philippe Grangier},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.03121},
year = {2022}
}
Comments
7 pages, no figure. In v3 first section rewritten in a more pedagogical form, and some additions later on