What is quantum in quantum randomness?

It is often said that quantum and classical randomness are of different nature, the former being ontological and the latter epistemological. However, so far the question of "What is quantum in quantum randomness", i.e. what is the impact of quantization and discreteness on the nature of randomness, remains to answer. In a first part, we explicit the differences between quantum and classical randomness within a recently proposed ontology for quantum mechanics based on contextual objectivity. In this view, quantum randomness is the result of contextuality and quantization. We show that this approach strongly impacts the purposes of quantum theory as well as its areas of application. In particular, it challenges current programs inspired by classical reductionism, aiming at the emergence of the classical world from a large number of quantum systems. In a second part, we analyze quantum physics and thermodynamics as theories of randomness, unveiling their mutual influences. We finally consider new technological applications of quantum randomness opened in the emerging field of quantum thermodynamics.Comment: This article will appear in Philosophical Transaction A, following the Royal Society Symposium "Foundations of quantum mechanics and their impact on Contemporary Society

Violation of Bell's inequalities in a quantum realistic framework

We discuss the recently observed "loophole free" violation of Bell's inequalities in the framework of a physically realist view of quantum mechanics, which requires that physical properties are attributed jointly to a system, and to the context in which it is embedded. This approach is clearly different from classical realism, but it does define a meaningful "quantum realism" from a general philosophical point of view. Consistently with Bell test experiments, this quantum realism embeds some form of non-locality, but does not contain any action at a distance, in agreement with quantum mechanics.Comment: This article is closely related to arxiv:1409.2120, with some parts condensed and others expanded, in order to spell out how the present approach explains quantum non-locality. In v2 some clarifications and improvements following referees remark