Using a simple version of the model for the quantum measurement of a two-level system, the contention of Aharonov, Anandan, and Vaidman [Phys. Rev. A 47, 4616 (1993)] that one must in certain circumstances give the wave function an ontological as well as an epistemological significance is examined. I decide that their argument that the wave function of a system can be measured on a single system fails to establish the key point and that what they demonstrate is the ontological significance of certain operators in the theory, with the wave function playing its usual epistemological role.
Using a simple version of the model for the quantum measurement of a two-level system, the contention of Aharonov, Anandan, and Vaidman [Phys. Rev. A 47, 4616 (1993)] that one must in certain circumstances give the wave function an ontological as well as an epistemological significance is examined. I decide that their argument that the wave function of a system can be measured on a single system fails to establish the key point and that what they demonstrate is the ontological significance of certain operators in the theory, with the wave function playing its usual epistemological role.
My view on the meaning of the quantum wave function and its connection to protective measurements is described. The wave function and only the wave function is the ontology of the quantum theory. Protective measurements support this view although they do not provide a decisive proof. A brief review of the discovery and the criticism of protective measurement is presented. Protective measurements with postselection are discussed. Introduction In the first graduate course of quantum mechanics I remember asking the question: “Can we consider the wave function as a description of a single quantum system?” I got no answer. Twelve years later, in South Carolina, after I completed my Ph.D. studies at Tel Aviv University under the supervision of Yakir Aharonov in which we developed the theory of weak measurements [1], I asked Aharonov: Can we use weak measurement to observe the wave function of a single particle? At that time I had already become a strong believer in the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics [2] and had no doubt that a single system is described by the wave function. Yakir Aharonov never shared with me the belief in the MWI. When we realized that using what is called now protective measurement , we can, under certain conditions, observe the wave function of a single quantum system, he was really excited by the result. At 1992 I was invited to a conference on the Foundations of Quantum Mechanics in Japan where I presented this result: “The Schrödinger wave is observable after all!”[3]. Then I went home to Tel Aviv where I finished writing a letter which received mixed reviews in Phys. Rev. Lett. , while Jeeva Anandan, working on the topic with Aharonov in South Carolina, wrote a paper accepted in Phys. Rev. A [4]. After acceptance of the PRA paper it was hard to fight the referees in PRL, but PLA accepted it immediately [5].
Introduction One of the crucial issues about protective measurements is the extent to which they provide (additional) grounds for some realist understanding of the wave function. This issue is notoriously subject to debate, which is not the aim of this chapter. Rather, this chapter aims at clarifying the further issue of the ontological picture corresponding to the realist understanding of the wave function possibly suggested by protective measurements. Oddly enough, proponents of a realist reading of protective measurements remain in general rather vague about ontology (see for instance Aharonov et al. (1993, 4624), who assimilate the wave function to an “extended object” without further details, or the brief and somewhat unprecise discussion in Dickson (1995, 135–136) of the interpretation of the wave function within Bohmian mechanics (BM) and within the theoretical framework elaborated by Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber (GRW); in this volume, Gao does propose a more elaborated ontological model for quantum mechanics (QM) based on protective measurements). Despite this vagueness (or maybe because of it), it seems that the most obvious ontological intuition resulting from protective measurements points towards some form of straightforward realism about the wave function understood in the sense of a real, physical field: indeed, protective measurements are claimed to allow measuring expectation values of observables on a single quantum system, thereby providing the possibility of reconstructing (i.e. “measuring” in some sense) the wave function of a single quantum system. Aharonov et al. (1996, 125) clearly express this intuition: “We can observe the expectations values of operators, and we can observe the density and the current of the Schrödinger wave. We can “see” in some sense the Schrödinger wave. This leads us to believe that it has physical reality.” Therefore, this kind of intuition seems in line with a realist conception of the wave function, according to which the wave function is considered as a real substantial, material in some sense) entity on its own (this view is often called “wave function realism”).
An experiment that would measure noncommuting quantum-mechanical observables without collapsing the wave function has been recently proposed by Y. Aharonov, J. Anandan, and L. Vaidman [Phys. Rev. A 47, 4616 (1993)]. These authors argue that this ``protected measurement'' may give an indication on ``the reality of the wave function.'' We show that the proposed experiment admits a much simpler interpretation: it is an experiment in which the quantum system is (assumed to be) in an eigenstate of the observable being measured. As such, the fact that no collapse occurs is trivial and can be understood without the need of the concept of ``protective'' devices. We argue that the experiment does not provide a way for measuring noncommuting observables without a collapse, does not bear on the issue of the ``reality of the wave function,'' and does not add any particular insight into our understanding (or nonunderstanding) of quantum mechanics.
The meaning of the wave function has been a hot topic of debate since the early days of quantum mechanics. Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in this long-standing question. Is the wave function ontic, directly representing a state of reality, or epistemic, merely representing a state of (incomplete) knowledge, or something else? If the wave function is not ontic, then what, if any, is the underlying state of reality? If the wave function is indeed ontic, then exactly what physical state does it represent? In this book, I aim to make sense of the wave function in quantum mechanics and find the ontological content of the theory. The book can be divided into three parts. The first part addresses the question of the nature of the wave function (Chapters 1-5). After giving a comprehensive and critical review of the competing views of the wave function, I present a new argument for the ontic view in terms of protective measurements. In addition, I also analyze the origin of the wave function by deriving the free Schroedinger equation. The second part analyzes the ontological meaning of the wave function (Chapters 6, 7). I propose a new ontological interpretation of the wave function in terms of random discontinuous motion of particles, and give two main arguments supporting this interpretation. The third part investigates whether the suggested quantum ontology is complete in accounting for our definite experience and whether it needs to be revised in the relativistic domain (Chapters 8, 9).
The wave function gives not the density of stuff, but gives rather (on squaring its modulus) the density of probability. Probability of what, exactly? Not of the electron being there, but of the electron being found there, if its position is ‘measured’. Why this aversion to ‘being’ and insistence on ‘finding’? The founding fathers were unable to form a clear picture of things on the remote atomic scale . John S. Bell (1990) Introduction The physical meaning of the wave function is an important interpretative problem of quantum mechanics. Notwithstanding nearly ninety years of development of the theory, it is still an unsolved issue. During recent years, more and more research has been done on the ontological status and meaning of the wave function (see, e.g. Monton, 2002; Lewis, 2004; Gao, 2011a, 2011b; Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph, 2012; Ney and Albert, 2013). In particular, Pusey, Barrett and Rudolph (2012) demonstrated that under certain non-trivial assumptions such as the preparation independence assumption, the wave function of a quantum system is a representation of the physical state of the system. This poses a further question, namely whether the reality of the wave function can be argued without resorting to non-trivial assumptions. Moreover, a harder problem is to determine the ontological meaning of the wave function, which is still a hot topic of debate in the realistic alternatives to quantum mechanics such as the de Broglie–Bohm theory or Bohmian mechanics (Belot, 2012). In this chapter, we will first give a clearer argument for the reality of the wave function in terms of protective measurements, which does not depend on non-trivial assumptions and can also overcome existing objections. Next, based on an analysis of the mass and charge properties of a quantum system, we will propose a new ontological interpretation of the wave function. According to this interpretation, the wave function of an N -body system represents the state of ergodic motion of N particles.
In this book, I have argued that the wave function in quantum mechanics is real, and it represents the state of random discontinuous motion (RDM) of particles in three-dimensional space. Moreover, this picture of quantum ontology is complete in accounting for our definite experience, but it requires that the quantum dynamics be revised to include a stochastic, nonlinear evolution term resulting from the RDM of particles. Obviously I took a road less traveled by researchers in the foundations of quantum mechanics. In order to convince more readers that this road is deserved to be taken, I will review the main results of this book and discuss them in a broader context. The starting point of my road is protective measurements (Chapter 1). In 1993, this new method of measurement in quantum mechanics was discovered (Aharonov and Vaidman, 1993; Aharonov, Anandan, and Vaidman, 1993). Distinct from conventional projective measurements, protective measurement is a method for measuring the expectation value of an observable on a single quantum system. By a series of protective measurements, one can even measure the wave function of a single quantum system. Therefore, besides the Born rule for projective measurements, protective measurements provide another, more direct connection between the wave function and results of measurements, which is not probabilistic but definite. It can be expected that a definite connection between the wave function and results of measurements is more important for understanding the meaning of the wave function and searching for the ontology of quantum mechanics. However, it seems that this connection provided by protective measurements is still less well known today, and its significance has not been fully realized by most researchers, either. The first stop on my road is the reality of the wave function (Chapter 4). It is correct to say that protective measurements alone do not imply the reality of the wave function. An additional connection between the state of reality and results of measurements is needed.