Related papers: Does the wavefunction describe individual systems?
Although quantum mechanics is one of our most successful physical theories, there has been a long-standing debate about the interpretation of the wave function---the central object of the theory. Two prominent views are that (i) it…
In quantum mechanics, the wavefunction predicts probabilities of possible measurement outcomes, but not which individual outcome is realised in each run of an experiment. This suggests that it describes an ensemble of states with different…
Central to quantum theory, the wavefunction is the complex distribution used to completely describe a quantum system. Despite its fundamental role, it is typically introduced as an abstract element of the theory with no explicit definition.…
For any kind of wave phenomenon one can find ways to derive the respective dispersion relation from experimental observations and measurements. This dispersion relation determines the structure of the wave equation and thus characterizes…
This chapter introduces the main ideas and the most important methods for representing the electronic wavefunction through machine learning models. The wavefunction of a N-electron system is an incredibly complicated mathematical object,…
A century on from the development of quantum theory, the interpretation of a quantum state is still discussed. If a physicist claims to have produced a system with a particular wave function, does this represent directly a physical wave of…
It is shown that the wave function describes the state of the statistical ensemble E[S] of individual particles, or the statistical average particle <S>. This result follows from the fact that in the classical limit h=0 the Schroedinger…
We investigate the meaning of the wave function by analyzing the mass and charge density distributions of a quantum system. According to protective measurement, a charged quantum system has mass and charge density distributing in space,…
Using a simple version of the model for the quantum measurement of a two level system, the contention of Aharonov, Anandan, and Vaidman that one must in certain circumstances give the wavefunction an ontological as well as an…
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…
The notion of wavelets is defined. It is briefly described {\it what} are wavelets, {\it how} to use them, {\it when} we do need them, {\it why} they are preferred and {\it where} they have been applied. Then one proceeds to the…
We draw attention to an elementary flaw in a recently proposed experiment to measure the wave function of a single quantum system.
My view on the meaning of the quantum wave function and its connection to protective measurements is described. The wave function and only the wave function is the ontology of the quantum theory. Protective measurements support this view…
In this letter we investigate the common procedure in which any wave function is expanded into a series of eigenfunctions. It is shown that as far as dynamical systems are concerned the expanding procedure involves various mathematical and…
The most puzzling issue in the foundations of quantum mechanics is perhaps that of the status of the wave function of a system in a quantum universe. Is the wave function objective or subjective? Does it represent the physical state of the…
A textbook interpretation of quantum physics is that quantum objects can be described in a particle or a wave picture, depending on the operations and measurements performed. Beyond this widely held believe, we demonstrate in this…
It is generally argued that if the wave-function in the de Broglie--Bohm theory is a physical field, it must be a field in configuration space. Nevertheless, it is possible to interpret the wave-function as a multi-field in…
Recently, it has been argued [arXiv:1111.6597, arXiv:1005.5173] that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumption that quantum mechanics is correct and that measurement settings…
We report on an experiment showing that the wavelength of a biphoton is clearly dependent on the measurement scheme and on the way it is defined. It is shown that it can take any value, depending on the control of the interferometer phase…
The field-theoretic wavefunction has received renewed attention with the goal of better understanding observables at the boundary of de Sitter spacetime and studying the interior of Minkowski or general FLRW spacetime. Understanding the…