Related papers: Can different quantum state vectors correspond to …
Recently, it has been argued [arXiv:1111.6597, arXiv:1005.5173] that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumption that quantum mechanics is correct and that measurement settings…
Quantum mechanics is an outstandingly successful description of nature, underpinning fields from biology through chemistry to physics. At its heart is the quantum wavefunction, the central tool for describing quantum systems. Yet it is…
Although quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories, there has been a long-standing debate about the interpretation of the wave function---the central object of the theory. Two prominent views are that (i) it…
Perhaps the quantum state represents information about reality, and not reality directly. Wave function collapse is then possibly no more mysterious than a Bayesian update of a probability distribution given new data. We consider models for…
Despite various parallels between quantum states and ordinary information, quantum no-go-theorems have convinced many that there is no realistic framework that might underly quantum theory, no reality that quantum states can represent…
Quantum states are the key mathematical objects in quantum theory. It is therefore surprising that physicists have been unable to agree on what a quantum state truly represents. One possibility is that a pure quantum state corresponds…
Several new physics experiments in 1998 were performed and analyzed to show the subtlety of quantum theory, including the "wave-particle duality" and the non-separability of two-particle entangled state. Here it is shown that the…
Testable predictions of quantum mechanics are invariant under time reversal. But the change of the quantum state in time is not so, neither in the collapse nor in the no-collapse interpretations of the theory. This fact challenges the…
In classical theory, the physical systems are elucidated through the concepts of particles and waves, which aim to describe the reality of the physical system with certainty. In this framework, particles are mathematically represented by…
The nature of quantum waves, whether they are real physical waves or, on the contrary, mere probability waves, has been a very controversial theme since the beginning of quantum theory. Here we present some possible experiments that may…
Is the wave function a physical reality traveling through our apparatus? Is it a real wave, or it is only a mathematical tool for calculating probabilities of results of measurements? Different interpretations of the quantum mechanics (QM)…
According to quantum theory, pure physical states correspond to equivalence classes of state vectors, where any two members of one class differ by a complex factor. The point is that such a factor does not change the probability for the…
When a quantum object -- a particle as we call it in a non-rigorous way -- is described by a multi-branched wave- function, with the corresponding wave-packets occupying separated regions of the time-space, a frequently asked question is…
Measurement is an important scientific activity. In most of science, including classical physics, is may be understood as a way of finding out about the physical world and representing the results numerically. No-go theorems show that…
A textbook interpretation of quantum physics is that quantum objects can be described in a particle or a wave picture, depending on the operations and measurements performed. Beyond this widely held believe, we demonstrate in this…
We celebrate this year hundred years of quantum mechanics but there is still no consensus regarding its interpretation and limitations. In this article we advocate the statistical contextual interpretation which is free of paradoxes. State…
The physical states of matter and fields are represented in the quantum theory with complex valued wavefunctions, or more generally by quantum states in an abstract linear vector space. Determining the physical nature of wavefunctions…
We introduce the quantum theoretical formulation to determine a posteriori, if existing, the quantum wave functions and to estimate the quantum interference effects of mental states. Such quantum features are actually found in the case of…
We explore the sense in which the state of a physical system may or may not be regarded (an) observable in quantum mechanics. Simple and general arguments from various lines of approach are reviewed which demonstrate the following no-go…
Quantum theory provides an extremely accurate description of fundamental processes in physics. It thus seems likely that the theory is applicable beyond the, mostly microscopic, domain in which it has been tested experimentally. Here we…