prof. dr hab. Marek Kuś, CFT PAN

Beyond quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is quite resistant to “small improvements". Variousattempts to replace it with a corrected (vis. “better") theory seem to run into troublesproducing results contradicting with experimentally established. Abandoning thus an elusive and hardly desirable idea of improving quantum mechanics, or replacing it with something “better”, it is tempting to understandhow itdifferentiates from other “possible theories” fulfillingsome general principles (like e.g. causality). I will show how to approach the problem from the logical point of view, exhibiting the exceptional position of quantum mechanics in comparison with classical mechanics and other possible causal theories with respect to such fundamental features as uncertainty relations and the existence of entangled states. Both properties are extremely important from the point of view of“ontological promises" offered by quantum mechanics. The quantum world is not only epistemically random (any apparent random dynamical behavior is caused by lack of knowledge of exact values of observables, like in classical physics), but intrinsically (ontologically) probabilistic.