Quantum mechanics from classical statistics (Q961521)

Although in existence for more than a century now, in the field of quantum mechanics and related areas of research are still open to large variety of questions including the foundational aspects. Classical levels of scientific thought should ever be respected as they would be the corresponding limits from the quantum summit. The author of the 47-page article strives to stress that a realization of Quantum Mechanics (QM) as a classical statistical system can throw considerable fresh light on the conceptional interpretation of careful experiments such as teleportation and quantum cryptography. After a thoughtful introduction starting with the crucial ingredients of probabilistic and unitary time evolution of QM there is a discussion with simple example of classical realization for the qubits of a quantum computer. Systematic discussion follows as to how all the characteristics of QM are realized in classical statistical ensembles with appropriate properties. Explicit classical examples of ensembles and all aspects of 2-state and 4-state quantum systems and correlations between measurements of ``quantum observables'' which can be computed from information contained in the state of the subsystem followed. After discussing the unitary evolution of the state of an isolated subsystem, section 7 is devoted to a detailed description of properties of quantum observables within classical statistical setting. In section 8 the issues of entanglement and Bell's inequalities are treated and the section 9 contains a detailed discussion of sequence of measurements and their relation to quantum mechanical commutator of two operators. The last part provides conclusions touching on several deep questions worthy of further consideration. There are 188 equations and 16 references in this very detailed and valuable work which furnishes much inspiring ideas on the quantum world.