1206.6024 (Karl Svozil)

The present situation in quantum mechanics and the ontological single
pure state conjecture    [PDF]

Karl Svozil

Despite its excessive success in predicting experimental frequencies and certain single outcomes, the "new quantum mechanics" is haunted by several conceptual and technical issues; among them (i) the (non-)existence of measurement and the cut between observer and object in an environment globally covered by a unitary (i.e. one-to-one Laplacian deterministic) evolution; related to the question of how many-to-one mappings could possibly "emerge" from one-to-one functions; and also where exactly "randomness resides;" (ii) what constitutes a pure quantum state; (iii) the epistemic or ontic (non-)existence of mixed states; related to the question of how non-pure states can be "produced" from pure ones; as well as (iv) the epistemic or ontic existence of pure but entangled and/or coherent states containing classically mutually exclusive states; an issue the late Schr\"odinger has called "quantum quagmire" or "jellification;" (v) the (non-)existence of quantum value indefiniteness and its purported "resolution" by quantum contextuality; and finally (vi) the claim that the best interpretation of the quantum formalism is its non-interpretation. All of these can be overcome by assuming that, at any given time, only a single pure state exists; and that the quantum evolution "permutes" this state in its Hilbert space.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6024