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arXiv:1208.6283

Quantum realism and quantum surrealism

Mateus Araújo

Published Aug 30, 2012• 6 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

In this thesis we explore the questions of what should be considered a "classical" theory, and which aspects of quantum theory cannot be captured by any theory that respects our intuition of classicality. This exploration is divided in two parts: in the first we review classical results of the literature, such as the Kochen-Specker theorem, von Neumann's theorem, Gleason's theorem, as well as more recent ideas, such as the distinction between $ψ$-ontic and $ψ$-epistemic ontological models, Spekkens' definition of contextuality, Hardy's ontological excess baggage theorem and the PBR theorem. The second part is concerned with pinning down what should be the "correct" definition of contextuality. We settle down on the definition advocated by Abramsky and Branderburger, motivated by the Fine theorem, and show the connection of this definition with the work of George Boole. This definition allows us to unify the notions of locality and noncontextuality, and use largely the same tools to characterize how quantum mechanics violates these notions of classicality. Exploring this formalism, we find a new family of noncontextuality inequalities. We conclude by reviewing the notion of state-independent contextuality.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1208.6283

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In this thesis we explore the questions of what should be considered a "classical" theory, and which aspects of quantum theory cannot be captured by any theory that respects our intuition of classicality. This exploration is divided in two parts: in the first we review classical results of the literature, such as the Kochen-Specker theorem, von Neumann's theorem, Gleason's theorem, as well as more recent ideas, such as the distinction between ψψψ-ontic and ψψψ-epistemic ontological models, Spekkens' definition of contextuality, Hardy's ontological excess baggage theorem and the PBR theorem. The second part is concerned with pinning down what should be the "correct" definition of contextuality. We settle down on the definition advocated by Abramsky and Branderburger, motivated by the Fine theorem, and show the connection of this definition with the work of George Boole. This definition allows us to unify the notions of locality and noncontextuality, and use largely the same tools to characterize how quantum mechanics violates these notions of classicality. Exploring this formalism, we find a new family of noncontextuality inequalities. We conclude by reviewing the notion of state-independent contextuality.
In this paper we attempt to analyze the physical and philosophical meaning of quantum contextuality. In the first part we will argue that a general confusion within the literature comes from the improper "scrambling" of two different meanings of quantum contextuality. The first one is related to an epistemic interpretation of contextuality, introduced by Bohr, which stresses the incompatibility (or complementarity) of quantum measurements. The second, is related to an ontic notion of contextuality, exposed through the Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem, which focuses on the constraints to discuss about actual (definite valued) properties within the orthodox formalism of QM. We will show how these two notions have been scrambled together creating an "omelette of contextuality" which has been fully widespread through a popularized "epistemic explanation" of the KS theorem according to which: The outcome of the observable A when mea- sured together with B or together with C will necessarily differ in case [A,B] = [A,C] = 0, and [B,C] ̸= 0. We will show why this statement is not only improperly scrambling epistemic and ontic perspectives, but is also physically and philosophically meaningless. In the second part of the paper, we will analyse the relation between ‘classical contexts’ and QM. We will show that three accepted presuppositions found within the orthodox literature are, in general, false. Namely: (i) that quantum contextuality does not preclude an objective description of physical reality, (ii) that the choice of a context (or basis) restores a classical description of reality, and (iii) that the choice of a (classical) context is a necessary condition for accounting for empirical statements in QM.
The main question under investigation in this thesis was the reality of the quantum state. We approached this problem by studying a recent no-go result by Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph, namely the PBR theorem. In Section 1 we provided a short introduction to quantum theory. A few relevant examples were covered, namely decompositions of quantum states, impossibility of the ignorance interpretation and the distinguishability of pure quantum states. Section 2 developed measure theoretic tools needed in the framework of ontological models. The Radon-Nikodym theorem was proven in order to justify the use of an alternative expression of the variational distance of probability measures. In Section 3 we developed a general framework for ontological models. In short, the ontological models framework can be considered the most general framework currently available for hidden variable theories and no-go results. We used the measure theoretic tools of Section 2 to make the formalism rigorous. Original research included in Section 3 was the characterization of a property called antidistinguishability for qubit states. A necessary and sufficient condition for antidistinguishability was given. It was then proven that any set of pure qubit states that is not antidistinguishable can be made antidistinguishable by adding a single carefully chosen state into the set. In the end of Section 3, some original observations were presented. Namely, a specific connection with contextuality was proven for sometimes ψ-ontic and never ψ-ontic ontological models. However, it was then noted that these observations were not enough to exclude never ψ-ontic ontological models, a feat that would have provided a new no-go theorem on its own. Contextuality in the ontological models framework was studied in Section 4. The main results were establishing preparation contextuality from the failure of maximal ψ-epistemicity and a proof of Bell's theorem based on preparation contextuality established this way. We concluded that ψ-ontic models cannot be Bell local based on these results. Finally in Section 5 the implications of ψ-ontology were discussed. By careful analysis of the results, it was noted that accepting the reality of the quantum state exposes explanatory gaps in the formalism. Possible solutions to the challenges introduced by these explanatory gaps were discussed through interpretations of quantum mechanics and the so-called measurement problem.
A central result in the foundations of quantum mechanics is the Kochen-Specker theorem. In short, it states that quantum mechanics is in conflict with classical models in which the result of a measurement does not depend on which other compatible measurements are jointly performed. Here, compatible measurements are those that can be performed simultaneously or in any order without disturbance. This conflict is generically called quantum contextuality. In this article, we present an introduction to this subject and its current status. We review several proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem and different notions of contextuality. We explain how to experimentally test some of these notions and discuss connections between contextuality and nonlocality or graph theory. Finally, we review some applications of contextuality in quantum information processing.
When it isn't possible to tell two distinct experimental procedures apart purely from their input/output statistics, then it seems a plausible hypothesis that the two procedures must be physically identical. We call such a hypothesis "noncontextuality", an instance of Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles. Read in the contrapositive, this hypothesis entails that any physical distinctions between two experimental procedures must necessarily lead to a difference in their operational statistics. The results I present in this thesis concern the failure of this hypothesis -- a failure dubbed "contextuality" -- when one tries to embed an operational theory (such as quantum theory) in the ontological models framework. The Kochen-Specker theorem demonstrates the failure of noncontextuality for deterministic ontological models of quantum theory, i.e., those ontological models where the ontic/physical state of the system fixes the outcome of any projective measurement on the system in a deterministic manner. This thesis goes beyond the Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem by asking what operational facts must be verified in experiments to conclude that Nature does not admit noncontextual ontological models, not even indeterministic ones. This leads to noncontextuality inequalities that are robust to noise in the preparations and measurements. In the particular case of quantum theory, these inequalities are meaningful even when unsharp measurements (or POVMs) are allowed, a feature not shared by the traditional approach to KS-noncontextuality where unsharp measurements are excluded by fiat: allowing them renders even trivial POVMs (proportional to identity) maximally KS-contextual. The sense in which trivial POVMs are indeed "trivial" (or "noncontextual") is clear in our approach: they are simply too noisy to lead to violation of our noncontextuality inequalities.
The interpretation of quantum mechanics has been a problem since its founding days. A large contribution to the discussion of possible interpretations of quantum mechanics is given by the so-called impossibility proofs for hidden variable models; models that allow a realist interpretation. In this thesis some of these proofs are discussed, like von Neumann's Theorem, the Kochen-Specker Theorem and the Bell-inequalities. Some more recent developments are also investigated, like Meyer's nullification of the Kochen-Specker Theorem, the MKC-models and Conway and Kochen's Free Will Theorem. This last one is taken to suggest that the problems that arise for certain interpretations of quantum mechanics are not limited to realist interpretations only, but also affect certain instrumentalist interpretations. It is argued that one may arrive at a more satisfying interpretation of quantum mechanics if one adopts a logic that seems more compatible with the instrumentalist viewpoint namely, intuitionistic logic. The motivations for adopting this form of logic rather than classical logic or quantum logic are linked to some of the philosophical ideas of Bohr. In particular a new interpretation of Bohr's notion of complementarity is proposed. Finally some possibilities are explored for linking the intuitionistic interpretation of quantum mechanics to the mathematical formalism of the theory.
The notion of contextuality, which emerges from a theorem established by Simon Kochen and Ernst Specker (1960-1967) and by John Bell (1964-1966), is certainly one of the most fundamental aspects of quantum weirdness. If it is a questioning on scholastic philosophy and a study of contrafactual logic that led Specker to his demonstration with Kochen, it was a criticism of von Neumann's "proof" that led John Bell to the result. A misinterpretation of this famous "proof" will lead them to diametrically opposite conclusions. Over the last decades, remarkable theoretical progresses have been made on the subject in the context of the study of quantum foundations and quantum information. Thus, the graphic generalizations of Cabello-Severini-Winter and Acin-Fritz-Leverrier-Sainz raise the question of the connection between non-locality and contextuality. It is also the case of the sheaf-theoretic approach of Samson Abramsky et al., which also invites us to compare contextuality with the logical structure of certain classical logical paradoxes. Another approach, initiated by Robert Spekkens, generalizes the concept to any type of experimental procedure. This new form of "universal" contextuality has been raised as a criterion of non-classicality, i.e. of weirdness. It notably led to identify the nature of curious quantum paradoxes involving post-selections and weak measurements. In the light of the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the Kochen-Specker theorem, this report aims to introduce these results little known to the French scientific public, in the context of an investigation on the nature of the weirdness of quantum physics.