On the Physical Representation of Quantum Superpositions

NEWTON DA COSTA; CHRISTIAN DE RONDE

Linguagem, Ontologia e Ação. Rumos da epistemologia

Principia

Año: 2011; p. 120 - 131

Physical superpositions exist both in classical and in quantum physics. However, what is exactly meant by ?superposition? in each case is extremely different. In classical physics one can have superpositions of waves or fields. A wave (field) α can be added to a different wave (field) β and the sum will give a ?new? wave (field) µ = α + β. There is in this case no weirdness for the sum of multiple states gives as a result a new single state. In quantum mechanics on the contrary, the sum of states cannot be reduced to one single state. There is no obvious interpretation of such superposition of states. Today, quantum superpositions play a central role in the most interesting technical developments such as quantum teleportation, quantum cryptography and quantum computation (Leibfried et al., 2005; Ourjoumtsev et al., 2007). The question we attempt to address in this paper regards the meaning of quantum superpositions and their physical representation. There are many interpretations of quantum mechanics each of which provides an answer to this question. In the following we shall review some of these proposals. We shall argue in favor of the importance of developing a new interpretation of quantum superpositions in terms of paraconsistent logic.