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Einstein’s boxes: incompleteness of quantum mechanics without a separation principle. (English) Zbl 1327.81014

Summary: Einstein made several attempts to argue for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics (QM), not all of them using a separation principle. One unpublished example, the box parable, has received increased attention in the recent literature. Though the example is tailor-made for applying a separation principle and Einstein indeed applies one, he begins his discussion without it. An analysis of this first part of the parable naturally leads to an argument for incompleteness not involving a separation principle. I discuss the argument and its systematic import. Though it should be kept in mind that the argument is not the one Einstein intends, I show how it suggests itself and leads to a conflict between QM’s completeness and a physical principle more fundamental than the separation principle, i.e. a principle saying that QM should deliver probabilities for physical systems possessing properties at definite times.

MSC:

81P05 General and philosophical questions in quantum theory
81P20 Stochastic mechanics (including stochastic electrodynamics)
81P40 Quantum coherence, entanglement, quantum correlations
00A79 Physics
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