Related papers: Real Numbers are the Hidden Variables of Classical…
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is often cited as an example of a "purely quantum" relation with no analogue in the classical limit where $\hbar \to 0$. However, this formulation of the classical limit is problematic for many reasons,…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…
The question of what is genuinely quantum about weak values is only ever going to elicit strongly subjective opinions---it is not a scientific question. Good questions, when comparing theories, are operational---they deal with the…
One of the great challenges for 21st century physics is to quantize gravity and generate a theory that will unify gravity with the other three fundamental forces of nature. This paper takes the (heretical) point of view that gravity may be…
How much of the uncertainty in predicting measurement outcomes for non-commuting quantum observables is genuinely quantum mechanical? We provide a natural decomposition of the total entropic uncertainty of two non-commuting observables into…
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…
Classical physics is about real objects, like apples falling from trees, whose motion is governed by Newtonian laws. In standard Quantum Mechanics only the wave function or the results of measurements exist, and to answer the question of…
Classical transport equations with probabilistic initial conditions can be viewed as quantum systems. In a discrete version they are probabilistic automata. The time-local probabilistic information is encoded in a classical wave function.…
Quantum mechanics (QM) has attracted a considerable amount of mysticism, in public opinion and even among academic researches, due to some of its conceptually puzzling features, such as the modification of reality by the observer and…
Quantum theory is extremely successful in explaining most physical phenomena, and is not contradicted by any experiment. Yet, the theory has many puzzling features : the occurrence of probabilities, the unclear distinction between the…
Although cosmic expansion at very small distances is usually dismissed as entirely inconsequential, it appears that these extraordinarily small effects may in fact have a real and significant influence on our world. Calculations suggest…
The approximations of classical mechanics resulting from quantum mechanics are richer than a correspondence of classical dynamical variables with self-adjoint Hilbert space operators. Assertion that classical dynamic variables correspond to…
Classical mechanics is a singular theory in that real-energy classical particles can never enter classically forbidden regions. However, if one regulates classical mechanics by allowing the energy E of a particle to be complex, the particle…
Quantum mechanics is nonlocal. Classical mechanics is local. Consequently classical mechanics can not explain all quantum phenomena. Conversely, it is cumbersome to use quantum mechanics to describe classical phenomena. Not only are the…
Recently, it has been argued that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, and that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumptions that quantum mechanics is correct and that…
Experimentally, certain degrees of freedom may appear classical because their quantum fluctuations are smaller than the experimental error associated with measuring them. An approximation to a fully quantum theory is described in which the…
In a recent paper (arXiv:1111.3328), Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph claim to prove that statistical interpretations of quantum mechanics do not work. In fact, their proof assumes that all statistical interpretations must be based on hidden…
Von Neumann's statistical theory of quantum measurement interprets the instantaneous quantum state and derives instantaneous classical variables. In realty, quantum states and classical variables coexist and can influence each other in a…
The violation of Bell inequalities by experiment has convinced physicists that we cannot maintain a classical view of the world. When we argue against the possibility of local realist hidden-variable models, however, the ubiquitous…
When compared to quantum mechanics, classical mechanics is often depicted in a specific metaphysical flavour: spatio-temporal realism or a Newtonian "background" is presented as an intrinsic fundamental classical presumption. However, the…