Quantum realism and quantum surrealism

Abstract

In this thesis we explore the question: whats strange about quantum mechanics? This exploration is divided in two parts: in the first, we prove that there is in fact something strange about quantum mechanics, by showing that it is not possible to conciliate quantum theory with various different definitions of what should be a normal theory, that is, a theory that respects our classical intuition. In the second part, our objective is to describe precisely which parts of quantum mechanics are non-classical. For that, we define a classical theory as a noncontextual ontological theory, and the non-classical parts of quantum mechanics as being the probability distributions that a ontological noncontextual theory cannot reproduce. Exploring this formalism, we find anew family of inequalities that characterize non-classicality.