Abstract

One of the most debated foundational issues since the early days of quantum mechanics is the precise nature of the quantum wavefunction. Despite being a key mathematical object in describing quantum mechanical systems, it is unclear whether it corresponds to physical reality (the ψ-ontic interpretation) or is a representation of knowledge or information about an underlying reality (the ψ-epistemic interpretation)? The latter appears very compelling in that it offers intuitive and simple explanations for many puzzling quantum phenomena. There is, for example no “measurement problem” in such models, since a measurement simply corresponds to an information gain and an update of the probabilities assigned to the possible measurement outcomes on the quantum system. Whether the ψ-epistemic is indeed compatible with quantum mechanics on the other hand has long been an open question.

© 2015 IEEE