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Raimundo Fernandez Moujan

Publications and source records attributed to Raimundo Fernandez Moujan.

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Everything is Entangled in Quantum Mechanics: Are the Orthodox Measures Physically Meaningful?

Even though quantum entanglement is today's most essential concept within the new technological era of quantum information processing, we do not only lack a consistent definition of this kernel notion, we are also far from understanding its physical meaning [35]. These failures have lead to many problems when attempting to provide a consistent measure or quantification of entanglement. In fact, the two main lines of contemporary research within the orthodox literature have created mazes where inconsistencies and problems are found everywhere. While the operational-instrumentalist approach has failed to explain how inequalities are able to distinguish the classical from the quantum, the geometrical approach has failed to provide a consistent meaningful account of their entropic measure. Taking distance from orthodoxy, in this work we address the quantification and measure of quantum entanglement by considering a recently presented objective-invariant definition in terms of the coding of intensive relations [21] which allows to escape the widespread relativist account of bases and factorizations [24, 25]. Going beyond the orthodox dualistic reference to "quantum particles" and "clicks" in detectors, we will argue that this new line of research is capable not only to evade the many open problems which appear within the mainstream literature, but is also able to present a consistent and coherent physical understanding of entanglement. The main conclusion of this work is that in quantum mechanics -- contrary to what is generally presupposed -- all operational expressions found within the laboratory are intrinsically entangled.

quant-ph

Equivalence Relations in Quantum Theory: An Objective Account of Bases and Factorizations

In orthodox Standard Quantum Mechanics (SQM) bases and factorizations are considered to define quantum states and entanglement in relativistic terms. While the choice of a basis (interpreted as a measurement context) defines a state incompatible to that same state in a different basis, the choice of a factorization (interpreted as the separability of systems into sub-systems) determines wether the same state is entangled or non-entangled. Of course, this perspectival relativism with respect to reference frames and factorizations precludes not only the widespread reference to quantum particles but more generally the possibility of any rational objective account of a state of affairs in general. In turn, this impossibility ends up justifying the instrumentalist (anti-realist) approach that contemporary quantum physics has followed since the establishment of SQM during the 1930s. In contraposition, in this work, taking as a standpoint the logos categorical approach to QM -- basically, Heisenberg's matrix formulation without Dirac's projection postulate -- we provide an invariant account of bases and factorizations which allows us to to build a conceptual-operational bridge between the mathematical formalism and quantum phenomena. In this context we are able to address the set of equivalence relations which allows us to determine what is actually the same in different bases and factorizations.

physics.hist-ph

Epistemological vs. Ontological Relationalism in Quantum Mechanics: Relativism or Realism?

In this paper we investigate the history of relationalism and its present use in some interpretations of quantum mechanics. In the first part of this article we will provide a conceptual analysis of the relation between substantivalism, relationalism and relativism in the history of both physics and philosophy. In the second part, we will address some relational interpretations of quantum mechanics, namely, Bohr's relational approach, the modal interpretation by Kochen, the perspectival modal version by Bene and Dieks and the relational interpretation by Rovelli. We will argue that all these interpretations ground their understanding of relations in epistemological terms. By taking into account the analysis on the first part of our work, we intend to highlight the fact that there is a different possibility for understanding quantum mechanics in relational terms which has not been yet considered within the foundational literature. This possibility is to consider relations in (non-relativist) ontological terms. We will argue that such an understanding might be capable of providing a novel approach to the problem of representing what quantum mechanics is really talking about.

physics.hist-ph