English

Hardy's Setup and Elements of Reality

Quantum Physics 2015-06-12 v2

Abstract

Several arguments have been proposed some years ago, attempting to prove the impossibility of defining Lorentz-invariant elements of reality. Here I revisit that question, and bring a number of additional considerations to it. I will first analyze Hardy's argument, which was meant to show that Lorentz-invariant elements of reality are indeed inconsistent with quantum mechanics. I will then investigate to what extent the light cone associated with an event can be used to define Lorentz-invariant elements of reality. It turns out to be possible, but elements of reality associated with a product of two commuting operators will not always be equal to the product of elements of reality associated with each operator. I will finally examine a number of ways in which the paradoxical features of Hardy's experiment can be better understood.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0902.3376,
  title  = {Hardy's Setup and Elements of Reality},
  author = {Louis Marchildon},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0902.3376},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

Clarifications; substantial changes in Sec. 4.3; to appear in Physica E

R2 v1 2026-06-21T12:13:25.260Z