Paper detail

Completing Quantum Mechanics with Quantized Hidden Variables

I explore the possibility that a quantum system S may be described completely by the combination of its standard quantum state $|ψ\rangle$ and a (hidden) quantum state $|ϕ\rangle$ (that lives in the same Hilbert space), such that the outcome of any standard projective measurement on the system S is determined once the two quantum states are specified. I construct an algorithm that retrieves the standard quantum-mechanical probabilities, which depend only on $|ψ\rangle$, by assuming that the (hidden) quantum state $|ϕ\rangle$ is drawn at random from some fixed probability distribution Pr(.) and by averaging over Pr(.). Contextuality and Bell nonlocality turn out to emerge automatically from this algorithm as soon as the dimension of the Hilbert space of S is larger than 2. If $|ϕ\rangle$ is not completely random, subtle testable deviations from standard quantum mechanics may arise in sequential measurements on single systems.