Related papers: Wavefunction reality, indeterminate properties and…
Realism -- the idea that the concepts in physical theories refer to 'things' existing in the real world -- is introduced as a tool to analyze the status of the wave-function. Although the physical entities are recognized by the existence of…
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…
The most puzzling issue in the foundations of quantum mechanics is perhaps that of the status of the wave function of a system in a quantum universe. Is the wave function objective or subjective? Does it represent the physical state of the…
Central to quantum theory, the wavefunction is the complex distribution used to completely describe a quantum system. Despite its fundamental role, it is typically introduced as an abstract element of the theory with no explicit definition.…
We argue that quantum mechanics makes sense without such controversial postulates as the wave function collapse, the quantum probability rule and the observable postulate. We only need the existence of a wave function as a representation of…
The possibility of a quantum system to exhibit properties that are akin to both the classically held notions of being a particle and a wave, is one of the most intriguing aspects of the quantum description of nature. These aspects have been…
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…
A brief review is given of the present state of an approach to consistency between basic quantum mechanics and a unique macroscopic reality, with no assumption of branching in the state of the universe. The main new idea consists in the…
We show that the quantum wavefunction, interpreted as the probability density of finding a single non-localized quantum particle, which evolves according to classical laws of motion, is an intermediate description of a material quantum…
There are reasons to doubt that making sense of the wave function (other than as a probability algorithm) will help with the project of making sense of quantum mechanics. The consistency of the quantum-mechanical correlation laws with the…
We investigate the meaning of the wave function by analyzing the mass and charge density distribution of a quantum system. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density proportional to the modulus…
A phase space formulation of the filtering process upon an incident quantum state is developed. This formulation can explain the results of both quantum interference and delayed-choice experiments without making use of the controversial…
We study the connection between dissipation and reality in macroscopic quantum systems. We present the following scenario; if we consider the dynamics of a `partial' wave function, the dissipation is represented as a nonlocal term and it…
This chapter reexamines wave function realism (WFR) through the lens of phenomenology. We begin by situating WFR within the broader debate about the ontology of the quantum state and the temptation to "read off" metaphysics from…
What is the quantum system? Consider the wavefunction of the electron, what we call single particle wave-function and assume that it contains N wave packets. If we pass all the wave packets through an electric field, all are deflected, as…
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…
I review arguments demonstrating how the concept of "particle" numbers arises in the form of equidistant energy eigenvalues of coupled harmonic oscillators representing free fields. Their quantum numbers (numbers of nodes of the wave…
The paper has heuristic character. The conceptual frame, based on the assumption of quantum uncertainty only, has been formerly introduced in two papers [S. Tosto, Il Nuovo Cimento B, vol. 111, n.2, 1996 and S. Tosto, Il Nuovo Cimento D,…
We investigate the meaning of the wave function by analyzing the mass and charge density distributions of a quantum system. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density distributing in space,…
I address the question whether the wave function in quantum theory exists as a real (ontic) quantity or not. For this purpose, I discuss the essentials of the quantum formalism and emphasize the central role of the superposition principle.…