QubiTO Quantum Seminars
Three seminars on the foundations of quantum mechanics, with Marco Giovanelli, Marco Genovese and Davide Romano.
In June and July, three seminars dedicated to the foundations of quantum mechanics took place, in which open problems regarding the interpretation of the theory were discussed, such as the question of its completeness and the meaning of the wave function, while also emphasizing the formal and experimental implications that a critique of its principles entails.
The seminar series featured presentations by Prof. Marco Giovanelli, historian and philosopher of physics and associate professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Turin, Prof. Marco Genovese, director of the quantum optics center at the National Institute of Metrological Research and corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Turin, and Dr. Davide Romano, researcher in the philosophy of physics at the University of Verona.
The seminars were held in English and lasted approximately one hour, followed by a discussion.
Program
Einstein’s Arguments against the Completeness of Quantum Mechanics
10 June 2026, 19:00, room 1S. Speaker: Prof. Marco Giovanelli (UniTo).
This seminar offered a historical overview of Einstein’s arguments against the completeness of quantum mechanics from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s. It was shown that these arguments take the form of reductio arguments: if the quantum-mechanical description is complete, one must accept consequences that appear physically unacceptable.
Two versions of this strategy were discussed, according to the consequence at stake. Reality arguments claim that completeness would force us to deny definite real states even to macroscopic systems before measurement. Separability arguments claim that completeness would make the state of one system depend on a measurement performed on another, spatially separated system.
Although the literature has generally emphasized the latter in connection with the EPR argument, the speaker argued that Einstein’s central concern is more clearly expressed by the former. Separability arguments functioned as a detour, allowing Einstein to circumvent the positivist denial that questions about the real state of a system before measurement are meaningful.
Once Einstein recognized the limits of this indirect strategy, his later writings returned to the reality argument, which addressed more directly his fundamental concern: microscopic systems, no less than macroscopic ones, must possess definite real states independently of observation, since no sharp boundary can be drawn between atomic objects and macroscopic bodies.
Entanglement, Bell inequalities and our vision of the world
26 June 2026, 18:00, room 1S. Speaker: Prof. Marco Genovese (INRiM).
Entanglement is the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics and has been at the basis of most of the debate on the foundations of quantum mechanics, becoming more recently also a fundamental resource for the second quantum technological revolution.
Starting from 1935, the EPR paper raised the question of whether the world is truly probabilistic or whether a more general deterministic theory exists, with quantum mechanics as an approximation. A fundamental contribution was the 1964 Bell theorem, which demonstrated that local hidden variable theories (LHVT) and quantum mechanics do not yield identical predictions for experiments on correlations of entangled states.
This theoretical paper started a long experimental work that culminated with 2015 experiments falsifying, without any possible loophole, LHVTs.
In this talk, Prof. Marco Genovese (INRiM) presented these issues, discussing the impact on our vision of the universe.
Making sense of the wave function
10 July 2026, 18:00, room 1S. Speaker: Dr. Davide Romano (University of Verona).
Dr. Davide Romano (University of Verona) discussed Bohmian mechanics as a realist approach to quantum mechanics, and the nature of the wave function.