Work

Sufficiency of the counterfactual account of Lüders' rule to rule out ontological models of quantum mechanics

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Ontological models, as used in the generalized contextuality literature, play a central role in current research on quantum foundations, providing a framework for defining classicality, constructing classical analogs of key quantum phenomena, and examining the ontology of quantum states. In this work, we show that a counterfactual account of Lüders' rule—which we argue is naturally implied by the mathematical structure of the rule itself—renders such models inherently incompatible with the quantum formalism. This incompatibility arises because the counterfactual update requires ontological models to update their states according to conditional probability, which in turn renders predictions of sequential measurements order-independent. This implies that ontological models, even contextual ones, must either act differently than what we would expect given (this, typically implicitly assumed account of) quantum state update rule, or cannot model quantum behavior.

Source: Physical Review A

DOI: 10.1103/65zd-1lys

Authors: Alisson Tezzin, Bárbara Amaral, Jonte R. Hance

Institutions: Universidade de São Paulo, Military Institute of Engineering, University of Bristol, Newcastle University

Language: English

Topic: Quantum Mechanics and Applications

Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

Field: Physics and Astronomy

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $2,675