Quantum theory of single events

Geoffrey F. Chew

Karl Hess

Einstein’s Trojan horse, built for the fortress of quantum theory, is contained in a publication that he authored together with two young physicists, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, and is generally called the EPR paper (Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, 1935). Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) presented a proof that the use of probability or chance in quantum theory has very unsettling consequences, because quantum theory teaches possible correlations of two distant events. How can single events that are random be correlated to other random single events? EPR suggests that there are only two possible explanations: • Quantum theory necessitates instantaneous influences, influences that propagate faster than the speed of light in vacuum. These influences of distant events on each other explain, then, the correlations of the two distant events. Einstein was convinced that his relativity theory had excluded the possibility of such influences, and if that was the explanation, then quantum mechanics was simply wrong.

Yousef Ghazi-Tabatabai, Petros Wallden

Sorkin has introduced a new, observer independent, interpretation of quantum mechanics that can give a successful realist account of the ‘quantum micro-world’ as well as explaining how classicality emerges at the level of observable events for a range of systems including single time ‘Copenhagen measurements’. This ‘co-event interpretation’ presents us with a new ontology, in which a single ‘co-event’ is real. A new ontology necessitates a review of the dynamical and predictive mechanism of a theory, and in this paper we begin the process by exploring means of expressing the dynamical and predictive content of histories theories in terms of co-events.

Ph. Blanchard, Arkadiusz Jadczyk

Hans A. De Raedt, Kristel F. L. Michielsen

Results from a discrete-event simulation of a recent single-neutron experiment that tests Ozawa's generalization of Heisenberg's uncertainty relation are presented. The event-based simulation algorithm reproduces the results of the quantum theoretical description of the experiment but does not require the knowledge of the solution of a wave equation, nor does it rely on detailed concepts of quantum theory. In particular, the data from these non-quantum simulations satisfy uncertainty relations derived in the context of quantum theory.

William C. Davidon