Foundations of quantum mechanics and their impact on contemporary society.

Nearing a century since its inception, quantum mechanics is as lively as ever. Its signature manifestations, such as superposition, wave-particle duality, uncertainty principle, entanglement and non-locality were long confronted as weird predictions of an incomplete theory, paradoxes only suitable for philosophical discussions, or mere mathematical artefacts with no counterpart in the physical reality [1,2]. Nevertheless, decades of progress in the experimental verification and control of quantum systems have routinely proven detractors wrong [3–7].Whereas there remains little doubt that quantum mechanics works and is one of the most accurate theories ever conceived to describe our universe, in particular at subatomic scales, considerable debate, however, remains on the interpretation of its elusive foundations [8].Far from being deterred by Feynman’s safe assumption that ‘nobody understands quantum mechanics’, the international community has hence worked relentlessly to shed light on the physical meaning of fundamental quantum principles and to push the boundaries of the quantum description …