How Real is the Quantum World?

Abstract

In spite of recent spectacular progress of experimental techniques, which allow today the practical realization of the gedankene experimente envisaged by Einstein and Bohr in order to discuss the strange properties of the quantum mechanical world, its ontological status is fax from being unanimously established, and the objective reality of its physical elements is generally denied. In this paper a realist interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is discussed, based on the concept that microscopic objects have “context dependent properties”. This concept, in its turn, is grounded on the proof that the theory is compatible with the existence of macroscopic objects which behave classically for all practical purposes. From these two features of this interpretation also the peculiar long distance correlations of quantum particles can be understood, provided that one accepts that physical laws do not formulate detailed prescriptions about all that “must” happen in the world, but only provide constraints and express prohibitions about what “may” happen. This implies that random events just happen, provided they comply to these constraints and do not violate these prohibitions. Finally a new reformulation of Quantum Mechanics, in which the concept of probability waves is eliminated from the beginning, is presented. In this way, not only its whole structure in phase space is deduced from a classical formulation of the uncertainty principle and a single quantum postulate, but it is also shown that the introduction of q-numbers in quantum theory is not a mathematical postulate coming out of the blue, but is a consequence of well defined physical requirements.