Accepted Papers

Reply to Gillis’s “On the Analysis of Bell’s 1964 Paper by Wiseman, Cavalcanti, and Rieffel” (Open Review Paper)

Published by on | 4 Responses

Howard M. Wiseman, Eleanor G. Rieffel and Eric Cavalcanti We address Gillis’ recent criticism of a series of papers (by different combinations of the present authors) on formulations of Bell’s theorem. Those papers intended to address an unfortunate gap of communication between two broad camps in the quantum foundations community that we identify as “operationalists” and “realists”. Here, we once again urge… Read more →

Concerning Quadratic Interaction in the Quantum Cheshire Cat Experiment

Published by on | 5 Responses

We believe the weak interaction of the quantum Cheshire Cat experiment must be linear if the weak values are to support the quantum Cheshire Cat interpretation, i.e., that a particle and one of its properties are spatially separated. For example, even though Denkmayr et al. measured the proper weak values for quantum Cheshire Cat in their neutron interferometry experiment, they did so using a quadratic… Read more →

Are Retrocausal Accounts of Entanglement Unnaturally Fine-Tuned?

Published by on | 3 Responses

D. Almada, K. Ch’ng, S. Kintner, B. Morrison and K.B. Wharton An explicit retrocausal model is used to analyze the general Wood-Spekkens argument [1] that any causal explanation of Bell-inequality violations must be unnaturally fine-tuned to avoid signaling. The no-signaling aspects of the model turn out to be robust under variation of the only free parameter, even as the probabilities… Read more →

A matter wave thought experiment concerning Galilean transformations

Published by on | 3 Responses

Yamaguchi Takeshi, Tokyo Institute of Technology The Schrödinger equation is invariant under Galilean transformations. Therefore, a matter wave should undergo the Doppler effect in the same manner as a classical wave and it should be observed when the measurement apparatus, i.e., the interferometer, moves with some velocity in the laboratory reference frame. Similarly, wave-like characteristics can be expected to appear if… Read more →

What’’s wrong with the wave function?

Published by on | 5 Responses

The call to supplement the wave function with local beables is almost as old as quantum mechanics. But what exactly is the problem with the wave function as the representation of a quantum system? I canvass three potential problems with the wave function: the well-known problems of incompleteness and dimensionality, and the lesser known problem of non-locality introduced recently by… Read more →

On the Analysis of Bell’s 1964 Paper by Wiseman, Cavalcanti, and Rie ffel

Published by on | 3 Responses

Edward J. Gillis In a recent series of papers Wiseman, Cavalcanti, and Rieffel have outlined and contrasted the operationalist and realist views about what we now call Bell’s theorem. They also assert that Bell presented these two different versions at different times. A careful examination of the historic 1964 paper and of the writings of Bell and others that preceded… Read more →

Derivation of quantum probabilities from deterministic evolution

Published by on | 2 Responses

T. G. Philbin Physics and Astronomy Department, University of Exeter, Stocker Road, Exeter EX4 4QL, United Kingdom The predictions of quantum mechanics are probabilistic. Quantum probabilities are extracted using a postulate of the theory called the Born rule, the status of which is central to the “measurement problem” of quantum mechanics. Efforts to justify the Born rule from other physical principles, and… Read more →

Primitive Ontology in a Nutshell (Open Review Paper)

Published by on | 6 Responses

The aim of this paper is to summarize a particular approach of doing metaphysics through physics – the primitive ontology approach. The idea is that any fundamental physical theory has a well-defined architecture, to the foundation of which there is the primitive ontology, which represents matter. According to the framework provided by this approach when applied to quantum mechanics, the… Read more →

Relational Blockworld: Providing a Realist Psi-Epistemic Account of Quantum Mechanics

Published by on | 5 Responses

We update our Relational Blockworld (RBW) explanation of quantum physics and argue that it provides a realist psi-epistemic account of quantum mechanics as called for by Leifer. RBW accomplishes this by employing discrete graphical amalgams of space, time and sources (“spacetimesource elements”) and an adynamical global constraint as ‘hidden variables’ that avoid the need for counterfactual definiteness in a realist… Read more →

Submitted paper: Haag’s Theorem as a Reason to Reconsider Direct-Action Theories

Published by on | 2 Responses

ABSTRACT. It is argued that the severe consequences of Haag’s inconsistency theorem for quantum field theories can be successfully evaded in the direct-action approach. Some recent favorable comments of John Wheeler, often mistakenly presumed to have abandoned his own (and Feynman’s) direct-action theory, together with the remarkable immunity of direct-action quantum electrodynamics to Haag’s theorem, suggest that it may well… Read more →

A possible definition of a Realistic Physics Theory

Published by on | 3 Responses

Nicolas Gisin (University of Geneva) Submitted to “90 Years of Quantum Mechanics” A definition of a Realistic Physics Theory is proposed based on the idea that, at all time, the set of physical properties possessed (at that time) by a system should unequivocally determine the probabilities of outcomes of all possible measurements. Full text