Contextual approach to quantum formalism (Q2518385)

In fact, quantum mechanics is quite mysterious, even weird, not yet fully understood, and wonderful (For et cetera, et cetera see the review of the book [\textit{Y. Aharonov} and \textit{D. Rohrlich}, Quantum Paradoxes. Quantum Theory for the Perplexed. Physics Textbook. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH (2005; Zbl 1081.81001)]). To demistify quantum mechanics and to make it reconciled with classical physics and to be completed, theories of hidden local variables -- these are actually the hypothetical parameters that an arbitrary quantum system endows and which govern the latter's measurements -- were proposed and were the key subject of longstanding debates, initiated by the famous EPR work [\textit{A. Einstein, B. Podolsky} and \textit{N. Rosen}, ``Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?'', Phys. Rev., II. Ser. 47, 777--780 (1935; Zbl 0012.04201)] that suggests that quantum mechanics only gives an incomplete description of nature. In the other words, the results of such measurements are, in some sense, predetermined and do actually depend on these hidden variables, rather on the specific properties -- i.e. the context -- of the measurement process that lies in the heart of quantum mechanics. In that sense, the hidden-variable theories feature the non-contextuality -- by definition, the contextuality is that the property of an arbitrary measurement has a value which is independent on other compatible measurements which are conducted at the same time. In 1964, some hidden-variable theories were refuted by the Bell's inequality [\textit{J. S. Bell}, ``On the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox'', Physics 1, 195--200 (1964)] since the non-contextuality conflicts with quantum mechanics [\textit{J. S. Bell}, ``On the problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics'', Rev. Mod. Phys. 38, 447--452 (1966; Zbl 0152.23605)], and due to the Kochen-Specker theorem [\textit{E. Specker}, ``Die Logik nicht gleichzeitig entscheidbarer Aussagen'', Dialectica 14 , 239--246 (1960); \textit{S. Kochen} and \textit{E. P. Specker}, ``The problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics'', J. Math. Mech. 17, 59--87 (1967; Zbl 0156.23302); see also \textit{A. Peres}, ``Incompatible results of quantum measurements'', Phys. Lett. A 151, 107--108 (1990) and \textit{N. D. Mermin}, ``Simple unified form for the major no-hidden-variables theorems'', Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 3373--3376 (1990; Zbl 0971.81501)]. There is yet another, even essentially more general, aspect of the contextuality of quantum mechanics that is actually linked to the measurement process that measures, in a sense, a quantum probability of something -- ``quantum contextuality'' or ``Bell's contextuality''. Usually, our perception of quantum probability is that it is actually a thing itself, is very special that stands rather far from other fields of science and may even cause ``a barrier (in any event, a psychological barrier) on the way to generalizations and applications of quantum probability calculus outside quantum physics'', as noticed A. Khrennikov in his book ``Contextual Approach to Quantum Formalism'', the book which will be reviewed below and which aims ``to demistify quantum probability''. To move on, let first of all define the meaning of ``context'' that is used throughout this book: the ``context'' is a set of conditions under which a given measurement is performed. The reviewed book is composed of five Parts: Part I -- ``Quantum and Classical Probability'', the basic Part II -- ``Contextual Probability and Quantum-Like Models'', III -- ``Bell's Inequality'', IV -- ``Interrelation between Classical and Quantum Probabilities'', and Part V -- ``Hyperbolic Quantum Mechanics''. The structure of Part I is rather trivial and consists of two Chapters. Chapter 1 deals with the postulates of quantum mechanics and their main interpretations, the Copenhagen and Ensemble, and particularly includes the contemporary definition of conditional probability, conventional in quantum logic and quantum information theory, and the notion of interference of probabilities. Chapter 2 is a brief introduction to the classical mathematical probability theory that mainly focuses on Kolmogorov measure-theoretic model and von Mises frequency model. To achieve the above book's aim, the author intends to derive the quantum probability calculus without directly invoking the conventional Hilbert space formalism that comprises of the complex Hilbert state space, Born's postulate, and interference of probabilities, and so on. The way to do so is rather reverse and consists of embarking on with a quite general scheme of probabilistic description of experimental statistical data -- the contextual probabilistic, so called Växjö model (Part II, Chapter 3) that unifies the classical -- Kolmogorov and von Mises -- and quantum -- Born-Dirac-von Neumann -- probabilistic models. Quantum-like representation algorithm or QLRA for short is proposed in Chapter 4 in order to deal with statistical data. Within the Växjö model, the quantum probabilistic formalism naturally arises via applying QLRA on the basis of the formula of total probability with interference term. The next Part III represents the probabilistic analysis of Bell's inequality, focusing in particular on the measure-theoretic derivations of Bell-type inequalities, such as Wigner's and Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt's inequalities, on the correspondence between classical and quantum mechanics, quantum nonlocality, on the frequency probabilistic analysis of Bell's inequality, on the EPR considerations, and concluding with the statement that ``loopholes are unavoidable in experiments aimed at establishing a violation of Bell's inequalities!'' The classical and quantum probabilistic models are continued to be treated in Part IV. The next, final one continues to develop the Växjö model and propose a so called hyperbolic quantum mechanics where observables are represented by self-adjoint operators in hyperbolic Hilbert space -- a Hilbert module over the hyperbolic algebra. As therein demonstrated, the hyperbolic quantum mechanics violates the conventional superposition principle and its classical limit coincides with the limit of quantum mechanics.