Related papers: Measurements on the reality of the wavefunction
It is hypothesised, following Conrad et al. (1988) (http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/papers/urbino.html) that quantum physics is not the ultimate theory of nature, but merely a theoretical account of the phenomena manifested in nature…
In this article we discuss the problem of finding an interpretation of quantum mechanics which provides an objective account of physical reality. In the first place we discuss the problem of interpretation and analyze the importance of such…
In the area of the foundations of quantum mechanics a true industry appears to have developed in the last decades, with the aim of proving as many results as possible concerning what there cannot be in the quantum realm. In principle, the…
This paper is a commentary on the foundational significance of the Clifton-Bub-Halvorson theorem characterizing quantum theory in terms of three information-theoretic constraints (Foundations of Physics 33, 1561-1591 (2003);…
During many years since the birth of quantum mechanics, instrumentalist interpretations prevailed: the meaning of the theory was expressed in terms of measurements results. But in the last decades, several attempts to interpret it from a…
I show that probabilities in quantum mechanics are a measure of belief in the presence of human ignorance, just like all other probabilities. The Born interpretation of the square of modulus of the wave function arises from the interaction…
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument on quantum mechanics incompleteness is formulated in terms of elements of reality inferred from joint (as opposed to alternative) measurements, in two examples involving entangled states of three…
After some historical remarks concerning Schroedinger's discovery of wave mechanics, we present a unified formalism for the mathematical description of classical and quantum-mechanical systems, utilizing elements of the theory of operator…
It is proved the mathematical theorem, that the wave function describes the statistical ensemble of particles, but not a single particle. Supposition, that the wave function describes a single particle appears to be incompatible with…
From the very beginning, Quantum Mechanics has been accompanied by crucial foundational questions: the possibility of visualizing physical processes, the limits of measurement epitomized by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, the…
An investigation of Einstein's ``physical'' reality and the concept of quantum reality in terms of information theory suggests a solution to quantum paradoxes such as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) and the Schroedinger-cat paradoxes.…
The question whether quantum measurements reflect some underlying objective reality has no generally accepted answer. We show that description of such reality is possible under natural conditions such as linearity and causality, although in…
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…
Are quantum states real? This most fundamental question in quantum mechanics has not yet been satisfactorily resolved, although its realistic interpretation seems to have been rejected by various delayed-choice experiments. Here, to address…
An interpretation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics is presented in the spirit of Erwin Madelung's hydrodynamic formulation of QM and Louis de Broglie's and David Bohm's pilot wave models. The aims of the approach are as follows: 1) to…
When most people think of physics, they think of what they learned in high school physics: that the world is fundamentally predictable. Given the position and velocity of a particle in space, it should be possible to predict its position at…
All the concepts and principles necessary to understand quantum mechanics on an initial level are given in a form suitable for the non-expert. The concepts explained include visualizing the wave function, wave-particle duality, the…
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…
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…
A particle is described as a non-spreading wave packet satisfying a linear equation within the framework of special relativity. Young's and other interference experiments are explained with a hypothesis that there is a coupling interaction…