Related papers: On the Reality of the Wavefunction
Generally a central role has been assigned to an unavoidable physical interaction between the measuring instrument and the physical entity measured in the change in the wave function that often occurs in measurement in quantum mechanics. A…
The idea that the wave function represents information, or knowledge, rather than the state of a microscopic object has been held to solve foundational problems of quantum mechanics. Realist interpretation schemes, like Bohmian…
When it isn't possible to tell two distinct experimental procedures apart purely from their input/output statistics, then it seems a plausible hypothesis that the two procedures must be physically identical. We call such a hypothesis…
.We expound an alternative to the Copenhagen interpretation of the formalism of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The basic difference is that the new interpretation is formulated in the language of epistemological realism. The {\psi}…
We compare different approaches to quantum ontology. In particular, we discuss an interpretation of quantum mechanics that we call objective quantum field theory (OQFT), which involves retrocausal fields. Here, objective implies the…
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…
This work sets out to answer a single question: what is the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics? However, we adopt a different approach to that normally used. Rather than surveying physicists, or poring over the precise details of…
Resource theories are broad frameworks that capture how useful objects are in performing specific tasks. In this paper we devise a formal resource theory quantum measurements, focusing on the ability of a measurement to acquire information.…
A proper knowledge of the reality of a physical theory is important to get an understanding of empirical phenomena. Despite its extraordinary predictive successes, the orthodox (also known as the Copenhagen) theory provides an indigestible…
Ontologies provide a formal description of concepts and their relationships in a knowledge domain. The goal of ontology alignment is to identify semantically matching concepts and relationships across independently developed ontologies that…
In this paper, we show that Quantum Mechanics does not admit ontological models, in the sense that the quantum state of a system cannot correspond to a set of physical states representing the independent reality of the system. We show, via…
Orthofermi statistics is characterized by an exclusion principle which is more ``exclusive'' than Pauli's exclusion principle: an orbital state shall not contain more than one particle, no matter what the spin direction is. The wavefunction…
Counterfactual quantum cryptography (CQC) is used here as a tool to assess the status of the quantum state: Is it real/ontic (an objective state of Nature) or epistemic (a state of the observer's knowledge)? In contrast to recent approaches…
Mathematical Theory of Evidence (MTE), a foundation for reasoning under partial ignorance, is blamed to leave frequencies outside (or aside of) its framework. The seriousness of this accusation is obvious: no experiment may be run to…
Detection efficiency loophole poses a significant problem for experimental tests of Bell inequalities. Recently discovered Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph (PBR) theorem suffers from the same vulnerability. In this paper we calculate the critical…
It is shown that from the expectation values of obervables, which can be measured for a single system using protective measurements, the linear structure, inner product, and observables in the Hilbert space can be reconstructed. A universal…
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…
Ontological models, as used in the generalised contextuality literature, play a central role in current research on quantum foundations, providing a framework for defining classicality, constructing classical analogues of key quantum…
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…
An operational definition of contextuality is introduced which generalizes the standard notion in three ways: (1) it applies to arbitrary operational theories rather than just quantum theory, (2) it applies to arbitrary experimental…