Related papers: The wave-function is real but nonphysical: A view …

A century on from the development of quantum theory, the interpretation of a quantum state is still discussed. If a physicist claims to have produced a system with a particular wave function, does this represent directly a physical wave of…

Scientific realism is the philosophical stance that science tracks truth, in particular in its depiction of the world's ontology. Ontologically, this involves a commitment to the existence of entities posited by our best scientific…

Based on principle of quantum mechanics, quantum cryptography provides an intriguing way to establish secret keys between remote parties, generally relying on actual transmission of signal particles. Surprisingly, an even more striking…

Quantum self-interference enables the counterfactual transmission of information, whereby the transmitted bits involve no particles traveling through the channel. In this work, we show how counterfactuality can be realized even when 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…

A new, realist interpretation of the quantum measurement processes is given. In this scenario a quantum measurement is a non-equilibrium phase transition in a ``resonant cavity'' formed by the entire physical universe including all its…

It has been experimentally demonstrated that quantum coherence can persist in macroscopic phenomena [J.R. Friedman et al.,Nature, 406 (2000) 43]. To face the challenge of this new fact, in this article QM in its standard form is assumed to…

Status of quantum wavefunction is one of the most debated issues in quantum foundations -- whether it corresponds directly to the reality or just represents knowledge or information about some aspect of reality. In this letter we propose a…

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,…

In the well known Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics, advocated by N. Bohr, the physical objects and the experimental results can be described only in a macroscopic language, leaving any possible microscopic description as…

Intuition from our everyday lives gives rise to the belief that information exchanged between remote parties is carried by physical particles. Surprisingly, in a recent theoretical study [Salih H, Li ZH, Al-Amri M, Zubairy MS (2013) Phys…

Within the class of ontological interpretations of quantum theory where a physical system comprises a particle and a field (wavefunction) guiding it, an empty wave is a segment of the wavefunction not containing the particle. We examine the…

Schroedinger's wave function shows many aspects of a state of incomplete knowledge or information ("bit"): (1) it is usually defined on a space of classical configurations, (2) its generic entanglement is, therefore, analogous to…

First, this article considers the nature of quantum reality (the reality responsible for quantum phenomena) and the concept of realism (our ability to represent this reality) in quantum theory, in conjunction with the roles of locality,…

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…

Some recent experiments claim to show that any model in which a quantum state represents mere information about an underlying physical reality of the system must make predictions which contradict those of quantum theory. The present work…

Quantum cryptography allows one to distribute a secret key between two remote parties using the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. The well-known established paradigm for the quantum key distribution relies on the actual…

It has been conjectured that counterfactual communication is impossible, even for post-selected quantum particles. We strongly challenge this by proposing precisely such a counterfactual scheme where -- unambiguously -- none of Alice's…

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…

While quantum reality can be probed through measurements, the Two-State-Vector formalism (TSVF) reveals a subtler reality prevailing between measurements. Under special pre- and post-selections, odd physical values emerge. This unusual…