Foundations Of Quantum Mechanics The Historical Analysis And Open Questions

In The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics - Historical Analysis and Open Questions, leading Italian researchers involved in different aspects of the foundations and history of quantum mechanics are brought together in an interdisciplinary debate. The book therefore presents an invaluable overview of the state of Italian work in the field at this moment, and of the open problems that still exist in the foundations of the theory. Audience: Physicists, logicians, mathematicians and epistemologists whose research concerns the historical analysis of quantum mechanics.

This volume provides a sample of the present research on the foundations of quantum mechanics and related topics by collecting the papers of the Italian scholars who attended the conference entitled “The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics — Historical Analysis and Open Questions” (Lecce, 1998). The perspective of the book is interdisciplinary, and hence philosophical, historical and technical papers are gathered together so as to allow the reader to compare different viewpoints and cultural approaches. Most of the papers confront, directly or indirectly, the objectivity problem, taking into account the positions of the founders of QM or more recent developments. More specifically, the technical papers in the book pay special attention to the interpretation of the experiments on Bell's inequalities and to decoherence theory, but topics on unsharp QM, the consistent-history approach, quantum probability and alternative theories are also discussed. Furthermore, a number of historical and philosophical papers are devoted to Planck's, Weyl's and Pauli's thought, but topics such as quantum ontology, predictivity of quantum laws, etc., are treated.

This volume provides a unique overview of recent Italian studies on the foundations of quantum mechanics and related historical, philosophical and epistemological topics. A gathering of scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds, the conference provided a forum for a fascinating exchange of ideas and perspectives on a range of open questions in quantum mechanics. The varied nature of the papers in this volume attests to the achievement of that aim with many contributions providing original solutions to established problems by taking into account recommendations from different disciplines. Contents: If Bertlmann had Three Feet (A Afriat); Macroscopic Interpretability of Quantum Component Systems (R Ascoli); Entanglement State Preparation in Experiments on Quantum Non-Locality (V Berardi & A Garuccio); Mathematics and Epistemology in Planck''s Theoretical Work (1898OCo1915) (P Campogalliani); The Electromagnetic Conception of Nature and the Origins of Quantum Physics (E A Giannetto); An Objective Background for Quantum Theory Relaying on Thermodynamic Concepts (L Lanz & B Vacchini); The Entrance of Quantum Mechanics in Italy: From Garbasso to Fermi (M Leone & N Robotti); Antonio Gramsci''s Reflection on Quantum Mechanics (I Tassani); The Role of Logic and Mathematics in the Heisenberg Formulation of Quantum Mechanics (A Venezia); Space-Time at the Planck Scale: The Quantum Computer View (P A Zizzi); and other papers. Readership: Physicists interested in the foundation of quantum mechanics; historians interested in the history and development of modern physics; philosophers interested in the epistemology and philosophy of modern physics."

This volume provides a unique overview of recent Italian studies on the foundations of quantum mechanics and related historical, philosophical and epistemological topics. A gathering of scholars from diverse cultural backgrounds, the conference provided a forum for a fascinating exchange of ideas and perspectives on a range of open questions in quantum mechanics. The varied nature of the papers in this volume attests to the achievement of that aim with many contributions providing original solutions to established problems by taking into account recommendations from different disciplines.

This volume provides a sample of the present research on the foundations of quantum mechanics and related topics by collecting the papers of the Italian scholars who attended the conference entitled ?The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics ? Historical Analysis and Open Questions? (Lecce, 1998). The perspective of the book is interdisciplinary, and hence philosophical, historical and technical papers are gathered together so as to allow the reader to compare different viewpoints and cultural approaches. Most of the papers confront, directly or indirectly, the objectivity problem, taking into account the positions of the founders of QM or more recent developments. More specifically, the technical papers in the book pay special attention to the interpretation of the experiments on Bell's inequalities and to decoherence theory, but topics on unsharp QM, the consistent-history approach, quantum probability and alternative theories are also discussed. Furthermore, a number of historical and philosophical papers are devoted to Planck's, Weyl's and Pauli's thought, but topics such as quantum ontology, predictivity of quantum laws, etc., are treated.

The aim of this book is twofold: to provide a comprehensive account of the foundations of the theory and to outline a theoretical and philosophical interpretation suggested from the results of the last twenty years.There is a need to provide an account of the foundations of the theory because recent experience has largely confirmed the theory and offered a wealth of new discoveries and possibilities. On the other side, the following results have generated a new basis for discussing the problem of the interpretation: the new developments in measurement theory; the experimental generation of ?Schr”dinger cats?; recent developments which allow, for the first time, the simultaneous measurement of complementary observables; quantum information processing, teleportation and computation.To accomplish this task, the book combines historical, systematic and thematic approaches.

Emergent quantum mechanics explores the possibility of an ontology for quantum mechanics. The resurgence of interest in "deeper-level" theories for quantum phenomena challenges the standard, textbook interpretation. The book presents expert views that critically evaluate the significance—for 21st century physics—of ontological quantum mechanics, an approach that David Bohm helped pioneer. The possibility of a deterministic quantum theory was first introduced with the original de Broglie-Bohm theory, which has also been developed as Bohmian mechanics. The wide range of perspectives that were contributed to this book on the occasion of David Bohm’s centennial celebration provide ample evidence for the physical consistency of ontological quantum mechanics. The book addresses deeper-level questions such as the following: Is reality intrinsically random or fundamentally interconnected? Is the universe local or nonlocal? Might a radically new conception of reality include a form of quantum causality or quantum ontology? What is the role of the experimenter agent? As the book demonstrates, the advancement of ‘quantum ontology’—as a scientific concept—marks a clear break with classical reality. The search for quantum reality entails unconventional causal structures and non-classical ontology, which can be fully consistent with the known record of quantum observations in the laboratory.