paper

A survey on uncertainty relations and quantum measurements

arXiv:1205.3892

Abstract

This survey tries to investigate the truths and deficiencies of prevalent philosophy about Uncertainty Relations (UR) and Quantum Measurements (QMS). The respective philosophy, known as being eclipsed by unfinished controversies, is revealed to be grounded on six basic precepts. But one finds that all the respective precepts are discredited by insurmountable deficiencies. So, in regard to UR, the alluded philosophy discloses oneself to be an unjustified mythology. Then UR appear either as short-lived historical conventions or as simple and limited mathematical formulas, without any essential significance for physics. Such a finding reinforces the Dirac's prediction that UR "`in their present form will not survive in the physics of future"'. The noted facets of UR motivate reconsiderations of associated debates on QMS. Mainly one reveals that, properly, UR have not any essential connection with genuine descriptions of QMS. For such descriptions, it is necessary that, mathematically, the quantum observables to be considered as random variables. The measuring scenarios with a single sampling, such are wave function collapse or Schrodinger's cat thought experiment, are revealed as being useless exercises. We propose to describe QMS as transmission processes for stochastic data. Note that the above-announced revaluation of UR and QMS philosophy does not disturb in any way the practical framework of the usual quantum mechanics.

76 pages,1 figure

References in corpus (10)

Cited by in corpus (2)