Petkov, Vesselin (2025) The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument in spacetime and in what sense quantum mechanics is fundamentally incomplete. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Two problems with the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument originate from the difficult-to-explain continual dismissal of Minkowski’s demonstration that the concept of spacetime represents a real four-dimensional world and is not just a mathematical space. The uncritical employment of the traditional three-dimensional language to the description of this argument leads (e.g., in its Bohm's version) to those problems: (1) due to the collapse of the common wavefunction of the constituents 1 and 2 of a disintegrated system, caused by the measurement of 1's spin (event $E_{1}$), and due the conservation of the total spin, 2's spin is \textit{instantaneously} determined (event $E_{2}$), which in three-dimensional language inescapably means that $E_{2}$ is \textit{caused} by $E_{1}$ (using merely a different word -- `correlation' -- does not explain anything in three-dimensional language); (2) events $E_{1}$ and $E_{2}$ are simultaneous \textit{only} for an observer $A$, who was at rest with respect to the disintegrated system, and therefore the total spin is not conserved for arbitrarily large periods of time for all observers in relative motion with respect to $A$ and there exists a class of observers $B$ for whom event $E_{2}$ occurs \textit{before} $E_{1}$, which demonstrates the inadequacy of the fundamental implicit assumption that the physical world is three-dimensional. When the reality of spacetime is explicitly recognized, (1) the paradoxes of the non-conservation of the total spin and that $E_{2}$ happens before $E_{1}$ for observers $B$ do not arise (because there is no `before' and `after' in spacetime) and the statement that there is a correlation between $E_{1}$ and $E_{2}$ makes a perfect sense, and (2) a spacetime model of the quantum object can then be considered (by also taking into account the non-fully-realized experimental fact that the quantum object \textit{actually} exists everywhere where its wavefunction is different from zero) in order to address the fundamental incompleteness of quantum mechanics -- that it deals not with the quantum object itself, but only with its states. The paper ends with a discussion of a prediction by the proposed spacetime model of the electron that can be tested experimentally probably by the quadratic Stark effect.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Petkov, Vesselin vpetkov@minkowskiinstitute.com 0000-0003-0678-4793
Keywords:	Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, quantum probability, four-atomism
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory
Depositing User:	Vesselin Petkov
Date Deposited:	15 Dec 2025 20:20
Last Modified:	15 Dec 2025 20:20
Item ID:	27482
Official URL:	https://vesselinpetkov.com/EPR-4-atomism.pdf
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics Specific Sciences > Physics > Relativity Theory
Date:	14 December 2025
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/27482

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