Related papers: Quantum description of reality is epistemically in…
Constructivist epistemology posits that all truths are knowable. One might ask to what extent constructivism is compatible with naturalized epistemology and knowledge obtained from inference-making using successful scientific theories. If…
Formulations of quantum mechanics can be characterized as realistic, operationalist, or a combination of the two. In this paper a realistic theory is defined as describing a closed system entirely by means of entities and concepts…
We examine the relationship between quantum contextuality (in both the standard Kochen-Specker sense and in the generalised sense proposed by Spekkens) and models of quantum theory in which the quantum state is maximally epistemic. We find…
Nonlinear modifications to the laws of quantum mechanics have been proposed as a possible way to consistently describe information processing in the presence of closed timelike curves. These have recently generated controversy due to…
Starting from arbitrary sets of quantum states and measurements, referred to as the prepare-and-measure scenario, an operationally noncontextual ontological model of the quantum statistics associated with the prepare-and-measure scenario is…
Operational frameworks are very useful to study the foundations of quantum mechanics, and are sometimes used to promote antirealist attitudes towards the theory. The aim of this paper is to review three arguments aiming at defending an…
Doubts are raised concerning the usual interpretation of the alleged failure, by quantum mechanics, of the distributive law of classical logic. The difficulty raised by incompatible sets of observables is overcome within an epistemic…
We provide a feasible necessary and sufficient condition for when an unknown quantum operation (quantum device) secretely selected from a set of known quantum operations can be identified perfectly within a finite number of queries, and…
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.…
We introduce a generalization of communication of partial ignorance where both parties of a prepare-and-measure setup receive inputs from a third party before a success metric is maximized over the measurements and preparations. Various…
One of the basic observations of the classical world is that physical entities are real and can be distinguished from each other. However, within quantum theory, the idea of physical realism is not well established. A framework to analyse…
Quantum error correction protects quantum information against environmental noise. When using qubits, a measure of quality of a code is the maximum number of errors that it is able to correct. We show that a suitable notion of ``number of…
For an arbitrary preparation, quantum mechanical descriptions refer to the complementary contexts set by incompatible measurements. We argue that an arbitrary preparation, therefore, should be described with respect to such a context by its…
While there is general consensus on the definition of incompatible POVMs, moving up to the level of instruments one finds a much less clear situation, with mathematically different and logically independent definitions of incompatibility.…
One hundred years after the creation of quantum theory, there is no consensus on the kind of reality that is described by the theory. Here, I attribute the lack of progress to the prevailing interpretative methodology, which invariably…
The quantum state is a mathematical object used to determine the outcome probabilities of measurements on physical systems. Its fundamental nature has been the subject of discussions since the origin of the theory: is it ontic, that is,…
Spekkens has introduced an epistemically restricted classical theory of discrete systems, based on discrete phase space. The theory manifests a number of quantum-like properties but cannot fully imitate quantum theory because it is…
Information theory establishes the fundamental limits on data transmission, storage, and processing. Quantum information theory unites information theoretic ideas with an accurate quantum-mechanical description of reality to give a more…
For a given set of input-output pairs of quantum states or observables, we ask the question whether there exists a physically implementable transformation that maps each of the inputs to the corresponding output. The physical maps on…
A theory is universal contextual if its prediction cannot be reproduced by an ontological model satisfying both preparation and measurement noncontextuality assumptions. In this report, we first generalize the logical proofs of quantum…