Bell nonlocality and the reality of the quantum wave function

Article Type

Research Article

Publication Title

Physical Review A

Abstract

The status of the quantum wave function is one of the most debated issues in quantum foundations - whether it corresponds directly to the reality or just represents knowledge or information about some aspect of reality. We propose a ψ-ontology theorem that excludes a class of ontological explanations where the quantum wave function is treated as mere information. Our result, unlike the acclaimed Pusey-Barrett-Rudolph's theorem, does not presume the absence of holistic ontological properties for product quantum preparations. At the core of our derivation, we utilize the seminal no-go result by Bell that rules out any local realistic world view for quantum theory. We show that the observed phenomenon of quantum nonlocality cannot be incorporated in a class of ψ-epistemic models. Using the well-known Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality, we obtain a threshold bound on the degree of epistemicity above which the ontological models are not compatible with quantum statistics.

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevA.104.022217

Publication Date

8-1-2021

Comments

Open Access, Green

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