Related papers: A no-go theorem for Quantum theory ontological mod…
Quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories; its predictions agree with experimental observations to an extremely high accuracy. However, the bare formalism of quantum theory does not provide straightforward answers to…
In order to claim that one has experimentally tested whether a noncontextual ontological model could underlie certain measurement statistics in quantum theory, it is necessary to have a notion of noncontextuality that applies to unsharp…
In QBism the wave function does not represent an element of physical reality external to the agent, but represent an agent's personal probability assignments, reflecting his subjective degrees of belief about the future content of his…
There are several important philosophical problems to which quantum mechanics is often said to have made significant contributions: - Determinism: quantum theory has been taken to refute determinism; -Free Will: in turn, this is thought to…
Quantum mechanics has been subject to logical scrutiny since its inception. The behavior of quantum systems, which are fundamentally dissimilar from classical systems, often appears to point to a logical inconsistency in quantum mechanics,…
Quantum theory provides an extremely accurate description of fundamental processes in physics. It thus seems likely that the theory is applicable beyond the, mostly microscopic, domain in which it has been tested experimentally. Here we…
Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some…
Standard quantum mechanics employs complex Hilbert spaces, but whether complex numbers are fundamental or merely convenient has long been debated. For decades, real-valued equivalents were considered mathematically possible but cumbersome.…
The theories of pre-quantum physics are standardly seen as representing physical systems and their properties. Quantum mechanics in its standard form is a more problematic case: here, interpretational problems have led to doubts about the…
Optomechanical systems can exhibit self-sustained limit cycles where the quantum state of the mechanical resonator possesses nonclassical characteristics such as a strongly negative Wigner density, as was shown recently in a numerical study…
Ontological theories of quantum mechanics describe a single system by means of well-defined classical variables and attribute the quantum uncertainties to our ignorance about the underlying reality represented by these variables. We…
Fundamental principle of classical physics -- local realism, means that freely chosen observations can be explained by a local (slower than light) real process. It is apparently violated in quantum mechanics as shown by Bell theorem.…
A formulation of non-relativistic quantum mechanics in terms of Newtonian particles is presented in the shape of a set of three postulates. In this new theory, quantum systems are described by ensembles of signed particles which behave as…
Arbitrary quantum states cannot be copied. In fact, to make a copy we must provide complete information about the system. However, can a quantum system self-replicate? This is not answered by the no-cloning theorem. In the classical…
Ontological models are attempts to quantitatively describe the results of a probabilistic theory, such as Quantum Mechanics, in a framework exhibiting an explicit realism-based underpinning. Unlike either the well known quasi-probability…
The Rovelli relational interpretation of quantum mechanics (RQM) is based on the assumption according to which the notion of observer-independent state of a physical system is to be rejected. In RQM the primary target of the theory is the…
QBism is one of the main candidates for an epistemic interpretation of quantum mechanics. According to QBism, the quantum state or the wavefunction represents the subjective degrees of belief of the agent assigning the state. But, although…
Some notes about quantum physics, an interpretation if one wishes, are put forward, insisting on `closely following the mathematics/formalism, the `nuts and bolts of what quantum physics says'. These, basically well-known, issues seem to…
Two proofs are presented which show that quantum mechanics is incompatible with the following assumption: all possible correlations between subsystems of an individual isolated composite quantum system are contained in the initial quantum…
One of the reasons for the heated debates around the interpretations of quantum theory is a simple confusion between the notions of formalism versus interpretation. In this note, we make a clear distinction between them and show that there…