A nonlocal ontology underlying the time-symmetric Heisenberg representation

Yakir Aharonov, Tomer Landsberger, Eliahu Cohen

Published 2015-10-11Version 1

We maintain that the wavefunction is best understood as describing ensembles rather than individual particles. For a single particle, we propose an ontology underwritten by the Heisenberg representation. It consists of deterministic operators which may have nonlocal dynamics. Indeed, nonlocal equations of motion, arising from the transition from Poisson brackets to commutator algebra, are a salient feature of the proposed ontology. Using this feature, we show how interference phenomena can be understood without having to conceive of the quantum state as wave-like. Nonlocal information is provided by a modular momentum operator. By augmenting the individual particle description with a final boundary condition and employing weak measurements, we show how both interference and which-path can be deduced for the same system. The resulting description is based on a time-symmetric Heisenberg representation, which we believe to capture the essence of quantum mechanics, particularly its nonlocal nature, better than any wavefunction based ontology.