A survey of the ESR model for an objective reinterpretation of quantum mechanics

Abstract

Most scholars concerned with the foundations of quantum mechanics (QM) think that contextuality and nonlocality (hence nonobjectivity of physical properties) are unavoidable features of QM which follow from the mathematical apparatus of QM. Moreover these features are usually considered as basic in quantum information processing. Nevertheless they raise still unsolved problems, as the objectification problem in the quantum theory of measurement. The extended semantic realism (ESR) model offers a possible way out from these difficulties by embedding the mathematical formalism of QM into a broader mathematical formalism and reinterpreting quantum probabilities as conditional on detection rather than absolute. The embedding allows to recover the formal apparatus of QM within the ESR model, and the reinterpretation of QM allows to construct a noncontextual hidden variables theory which justifies the assumptions introduced in the ESR model and proves its objectivity. According to the ESR model both linear and nonlinear time evolution occur, depending on the physical environment, as in QM. In addition, the ESR model, though objective, implies modified Bell's inequalities that do not conflict with QM, supplies different mathematical representations of proper and improper mixtures, provides a general framework in which the local interpretations of the GHZ experiment obtained by other authors are recovered and explained, and supports an interpretation of quantum logic which avoids the introduction of the problematic notion of quantum truth.

12 pages

References in corpus (8)

• Hidden Variables and the Two Theorems of John Bell
• Research on Hidden Variable Theories: a review of recent progresses
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• Quantum probabilities and violation of CHSH-inequality from classical random signals and threshold type properly calibrated detectors
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• Extended Representations of Observables and States for a Noncontextual Reinterpretation of QM
• Finite Local Models for the GHZ Experiment

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Outline of a Generalization and a Reinterpretation of Quantum Mechanics Recovering Objectivity
• A Pragmatic Interpretation of Quantum Logic
• Non-Contextual and Local Hidden-Variable Model for the Peres-Mermin and Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger Systems
• Kolmogorovian versus non-Kolmogorovian probabilities in contextual theories