Talk:Quantum entanglement

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[edit] improve the article

For example, it is possible to prepare two particles in a single quantum state such that when one is observed to be spin-up, the other one will always be observed to be spin-down and vice versa, this despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of measurements will be observed.

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Primary:

  • It is necessary to mention *angular dependence* of entanglement. Without it a classical model can explain the results. For example: a red and green ball are each placed in their own leather bags (objects made indistinguishable) and then they are placed in a larger bag and shuffled. One small bag is then thown at Alice the other at Bob. The instant Alice opens her bag she knows the color of Bob's ball. Alice can not predict what color she will receive since the source generates random choices but the two thrownspin of an electron-positron pair with 66% probability and without measuring.

Secondary

this sentence is horribly written and i dont know enough to correct it. please someone do sothis despite the fact that it is impossible to predict, according to quantum mechanics, which set of

Please scroll down to read about the dispute.

[edit] transmitting information

(13 Feb 2003) Though I have read the discussion below about transmitting (and not transmitting) information, I am afraid I still don't "get it." Perhaps my brain stumbles on the meaning of "classical" information. To my average mind, "information" would include the fact that the state of a paired photon had changed. If that sort of "information" is detectable, it seems fairly easy to imagine that such transmissions could be scaled up and such transaction could be used to transmit any sort of "information."

What raised the issue is the latest of several New Scientist articles, http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993384, mentioning entanglement being used to transmit information. I confess I don't fully understand the articles.

In quantum mechanics, the only "information" you can obtain is by performing a measurement. In this case, this is the measurement of "spin". Nothing else can tell you anything about the system, including whether or not "the state of a paired photon had changed." As for quantum teleportation, see that article. -- CYD
I don't fully understand the article either (I'm not a quantum physicist). But is it possible to "scramble" a particle that has already been observed so that its state is again uncertain? Because this would open up a whole new can of worms.
Yes. You use some device to observe (the previous state of) the particle. That device scrambles the state of the particle, so that the state (after the observation) is again uncertain. But that device also causes quantum decoherence, so the state (after the observation) is no longer entangled with the state of the other object. Is there some way we could make this more clear in the article? --DavidCary 18:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Currently the article seems to contradict itself. It implies that entanglement *can* be used to transmit information ( quantum cryptography, and perhaps quantum_teleportation ), and yet *cannot* be used to transmit information ("Although two entangled systems can interact across large spatial separations, no useful information can be transmitted in this way.").

Is there some way to clarify that

  • entanglement might be useful in some communication systems, but
  • one cannot transmit information faster than the speed of light (whether or not one uses entanglement).

? --DavidCary 18:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] "pure", "seperable", "mixed"

I corrected a small confusion between the definitions of 'pure' and 'separable' states. [from the Centre for Quantum Computation, Oxford]

Do you have a reference? Several books and webpages I have read, on QC and other topics, simply refer to it as a "pure" (as opposed to "mixed") state. For example, Sakurai refers to a "pure ensemble". -- CYD

Hi. Indeed pure states are opposed to mixed states. But both types can also be either separable or not, and that was the confusion that I tried to correct. If a bipartite state (pure or mixed) is separable then its parts can be produced separately by classically correlated sources. If it is not separable, then the state is said to be entangled, and can exhibit non-locality, contextuality and such counter-intuitive phenomena. A review on separability can be found on http://uk.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0006064 but it is quite technical. I again read through and corrected a few problems arising from this confusion.

A comment on notation: The product Hilbert space of the two particles is the tensor product. However, the notation used on this page is traditionally used, at least within mathematical texts, for the direct product, ie the cartesian product of the sets endowed with the appropriate coordinate-wise notions of addition and scalar multiplication. The tensor product is not the same thing, as can be seen by comparing the correctly-given basis here to the basis of the direct product, which would be a sum over one index, extended to include the separate terms individually, but not as a product. This can be a source of considerable confusion for someone who knows a little about the mathematics of Hilbert space and is trying to figure out how it applies to quantum mechanics.

claim that hidden variables theories can't be local removed

Would you care to comment on why this claim is inaccurate? It seems to me a cogent description of the outcome of Bell's theorem. -- CYD

Then Bell's theorem is wrong.

Many-worlds is a counter-example to the claim. It is a purely local theory which is also deterministic. It is also the quintessence of a hidden variables theory; think of all those worlds which we can never observe. I could be wrong about the locality of many-worlds but most people seem to consider it local in the important sense (that non-local effects are unnecessary to explain the Aspect experiment). -- ark

Many-worlds is local, but it is not a hidden-variable theory in the sense of Bell's theorem. I think the characterization of Bell's theorem was correct. See EPR paradox. AxelBoldt, Thursday, May 30, 2002

I don't think it makes sense to talk about many-worlds being "local", because the Hilbert space of a system need not be the space of square integrable wavefunctions. If I'm not mistaken, that's how non-local phenomena (such as the EPR paradox) come about. -- CYD

Whatever you guys decide, the EPR paradox page needs to seriously change. For example, it says "many hidden variables theories have been constructed" and then says "but experiments sided with QM against them". What theories are they talking about? I don't know and it will seem to most people that it's talking about Many-worlds. That's just one example by the way.

Also, an alternative to interpretating Bell's theorem as saying that Many-worlds is not a hidden-variable theory, is simply to say that Bell's theorem is meaningless because it uses a concept of "hidden-variable" which ultimately interests no one. -- ark

Well, obviously that kind of hidden-variable theory interests no one now. On the other hand, EP&R did suggest that quantum mechanics was incomplete, relying on some underlying classical hidden variables. I'm not actually sure if their suggestion was developed by anyone into a workable theory, but Bell's theorem imposes quite strong constraints on the kind of hidden variable theory that can be formulated while matching reality. -- CYD

Something that physicists (and serious physics students) seem to rarely understand is that the mathematics of physics is a completely different subject from the history of physics, which is still different from the ontology of physics (what exists in reality, what I would call the essence of physics).

And they never understand that you can and should teach these three very different subjects separately. So if Bell's inequality is only of historical importance then it's useless and should never be mentioned outside a class on historical physics, where it would be taught aside other great failures of physics. If there's anything in Bell's analysis that's actually relevant to the ontologies of modern physics theories, then that should be carefully extracted out and the rest discarded as chaff. -- ark

As a student of physics (junior level), i'm right now studying the progress of the EPR paradox through Bell's inequalities and into quantum teleportation. I don't think calling Bell's theorem a failure is particularly useful, in that it does set up a specific test of entanglement and present a way to measure it, which was done directly by Aspect, Grangier and Roger. In addition, going though the history of this debate has helped solidify--as much as possible for QM--my understanding of what we're doing with QM. It's poorly worded, but what i'm trying to say is that physics is in some sense inseperable from a selected study of history. it's by learning what other people did, where they were right and where they were wrong, that you actually come to understand what is going on-- for instance, if EPR were right, then QM wouldn't just be incomplete, it would be downright wrong. AGR fround the opposite, and we can work out some more details from there. Talking about quantum entanglement wouldn't make sense at present if you didn't know anything about bell's theorem; that's my opinion as someone looking at the topic for the first time. If you're worried about people misunderstanding how bell's theorem presently applies to physics, well, it seems like directing them to intelligible resources like the appendix of D.J.Griffiths QM book or Bell's Speakable and Unspeakable in QM is the best path to take. This is my first real visit to wikipedia, so please let me know if i have the right idea about how the site works. --T^3

"Entanglement obeys the letter if not the spirit of relativity"

It's funny to read this given:

The peculiar aspects of quantum spin measurements in EPR-type experiments can be regarded as a natural extension of the principle of special relativity. (http://www.mathpages.com/rr/s9-09/9-09.htm)

The "spirit of relativity" refers to the locality principle, which it's fairly clear was what EP&R were concerned about. The link you provided offers an analogy between quantum measurements and relativity - which is not incorrect, but it's not the standard approach to this problem, AFAIK. -- CYD

Of course, the standard approaches don't seem to be a lot of help to most people, especially non-experts, in understanding physics. So I think that, like other ambiguous stuff that you need to be a physicist (and preferably a historian of physics) to understand, it should just be removed. (Like I did on the Copenhagen page. What do you think of it btw?) -- ark

Someone deleted my previous note that at least one scientist has actually used this to transmit information, based on the "fact" that its not possible to do so. Tell that to him--he'd already done it. Classical music, to my recollection. Anyway, here is a formal piece of evidence thats just cropped up:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4522247%255E2702,00.html

The URL's a little mangled...

--Alan D

Actually, all they did was quantum teleportation, which never transmits classical information faster than the speed of light, and isn't even helpful for sending classical information. One key paragraph is:
An encoded radio signal is embedded on an input laser, which is combined with entanglement and then scanned. The laser is destroyed in the process. But the radio signal survives and is sent electronically to a receiving station, where within a nanosecond an exact replica of the beam - with the radio signal intact - is retrieved and decoded.
Notice that in order to teleport the laser from point A to point B, they had to first destroy the beam, then send radio waves (at the speed of light) from point A to B, then recreate the beam. You could say that the quantum state was teleported instantly, but the people at B couldn't detect that it had been teleported until after the slow radio waves reached them. Point B didn't end up with any more classical information than was already present in those radio waves. Quantum teleportation has been done by a number of people now, but it has never sent a single bit of classical information. -LC, Sunday, June 16, 2002

OK, I misinterpreted that part...I'm certainly no expert :-) I'm wondering now if the thing on the classical music was the same. He explicitly stated however that he was transmitting information using the technique, but it could have been sensationalistic journalism. I wish I could remember where I saw it.

--alan d

If I'm not mistaken, the reference you provided covers a technique called quantum teleportation, which is not what this article is talking about. The article is noting that it is impossible to transfer information using the EPR setup; otherwise, you would be able to send information faster than light. It is possible to transfer information using quantum teleportation, but then the information will not travel faster than light. -- CYD

I find the first sentence of this article potentially highly misleading: The entanglement of two quantum systems that are far apart does NOT lead to them interacting with each other over the distance - at least not within the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics. They just may show correlations that are so strong that, if you want to explain them in terms of a hidden-variable theory (as EPR intended to, for example), this hidden-variable theory cannot be a local theory. For example, in Bohm's h.v. theory (which agrees with q.m. predictions and therefore, according to Bell, has to be nonlocal) one can indeed see how one of the particles is influenced by what the other one does (which may be influenced by the setting of the other detector). But as you point out yourself, it cannot be used for superluminal communication, because the outcomes are statistical, and on the average there is no mutual influence. Since usual QM only talks about statistical results anyway, it is misleading (at least for the beginner) to imagine a superluminal influence appearing between the particles.

How about something like this: Entanglement is a purely quantum-mechanical property of two particles whose physical attributes (like position, momentum or spin) have become correlated after interacting with each other. The correlations between such "entangled" particles may be shown to be stronger than any "classical-like" theory allows, under appropriate circumstances (see below for more details). -- FlorianMarquardt

I went ahead and did something like this. Feel free to make such changes without posting to the Talk page, as that is more efficient. Welcome to Wikipedia, by the way! -- CYD

On the Formalism section - that's a tensor product of Hilbert spaces, rather than cartesian product, isn't it? I wouldn't want to transgress any conventions usual in the topics, but this does seem to be a key point.

Charles Matthews 10:30, 19 Jun 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Bell test loopholes

I've added a couple of links re Bell test loopholes recently. Too much has been written about quantum entanglement on the assumption that the experiments have confirmed it convincingly. Re the apparent (limited) success of applications of entanglement, some readers might be interested in an article I've archived [1] that has yet to find a publisher. It seems likely that the real world is producing something useful by way of real correlations of phase and frequency but not otherwise taking much notice of accepted theory. The net result is better described by classical wave theory, adapted to allow for the behaviour of modern beamsplitters and photodetectors. Caroline Thompson 08:42, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying that quantum mechanics is incorrect? -- Tim Starling 08:50, Jul 1, 2004 (UTC)
As far as the experimental evidence is concerned, there is at present nothing to choose between QM and local realism. Popular accounts that claim local realism has been ruled out by, e.g. Aspect's experiments, are wrong. Which theory is actually right is best tackled, I think, not by searching for "loophole-free" experiments (which several teams are doing) but by investigating more carefully which model fits the facts best in existing setups, when the conditions are modified slightly. If the local realist model (the basic form of which has been known all along) turns out to be superior, correctly predicting the way the coincidence curves will change when you vary, for instance, detector efficiency, then it will have been shown that QM does not work for these experiments. However, the determined quantum theorist will be able to continue to believe that it works for smaller systems. The experiments are in fact macroscopic. (Caroline Thompson 17:21, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC))

I toned down Reeh-Schlieder remark, as I see no much beef in the Reeh-Schlieder theorem for quantum entanglement. RS simply states that the non-local effects aren't exactly zero but vanish exponentially with distance. And it is a very general statement about all states and local operators. QE in QFT would need larger correlations for a smaller set of states. Pjacobi 09:33, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Experimental proof / scientific consensus

So a few weeks ago, I was listening to MIT Prof. Seth Lloyd on NPR explaining the experiment behind this promo text:

"New research into quantum entanglement by a group of researchers in Austria reveals that two photons can be entangled -- in a strange linked state --without a connection between them, even when the photons in question are on opposite sides of the Danube."

The paper was published in *Science* in 2003 - Aspelmeyer et al., Long-Distance Free-Space Distribution of Quantum Entanglement. You can find it on sciencemag.org, but registration is required. Prof. Lloyd was certainly under the impression that quantum entanglement is real. A free popular-press summary: http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/6/20/1

Digging a bit further, I also found this press release

February 26, 2003
Michigan researchers achieve quantum entanglement of three electrons
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The quantum entanglement of three electrons, using an ultrafast optical pulse and a quantum well of a magnetic semiconductor material, has been demonstrated in a laboratory at the University of Michigan, marking another step toward the realization of a practical quantum computer. While several experiments in recent years have succeeded in entangling pairs of particles, few researchers have managed to correlate three or more particles in a predictable fashion.
The results were presented in an article on Nature Materials' web site on February 23 and will appear in the March 4 issue of Nature Materials, titled "Optically induced multispin entanglement in a semiconductor quantum well." Authors of the paper are Jiming Bao, Andrea V. Bragas, Jacek K. Furdyna (University of Notre Dame), and Roberto Merlin.

You can find this article on nature.com, but again, registration is required.

These purported demonstrations of quantum entanglement are more recent (2003) than the experiments in the 1970s and 1980s which the article Clauser and Horne's 1974 Bell test currently discredits. My preliminary sampling of professional opinion suggests to me that the peer-reviewed physics community is of the opinion that quantum entanglement has been convincingly demonstrated. I therefore dispute the claim made on Talk:Clauser and Horne's 1974 Bell test that "[t]here is as yet no convincing evidence that quantum entanglement occurs." I invite discussion of the 2003 experiments and further investigation of peer-reviewed articles and the opinions of professional scientists and engineers, to resolve the dispute. -- Beland 02:41, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that there is not much dispute over the experimental results. It's pretty clear that there no generally experimentally accepted results that contradict QM. You can find lots of loopholes by which you can argue that local realist models are still correct. However, it is also the case that any local realist models are going to have to deal with explaining the phenonmenon that looks like quantum entanglement.

Roadrunner 04:43, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Except for the conflict between QM and General Relativity, I think you mean, no? -- Beland 01:23, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)
That's theory and not experiment. The current state of place is that there are no known experimental results that conflict with QM. There are also no known experimental results that conflict with GR. Now it is true that at high enough energies, QM and GR conflict with each other. Unfortunately those energies are so high that we can't do an experiment.

Roadrunner 03:51, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

This is a difficult situation. I know full well that the physics community will tell you that quantum entanglement has been experimentally confirmed, but I have more complete information on the subject than most.
I think its necessary to distinguish the phenonmenon of "quantum entanglement" from quantum mechanics If you define it as the the phenonmenon by which the observed state of one particle is correlated with the observed state of a distant particle, that is definitely been observed. What isn't completely solid is that QM or something mathematically equivalent is the only possible explanation for the phenonmenon.

Roadrunner 03:51, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I know, for instance, that the tests used in these modern experiments have the same loopholes as the CHSH one. They are not valid since they depend on the assumption of "fair sampling". To see why this assumption is not reasonable, I do urgently suggest that you look at my 1996 paper or one of several on my web site or the quant-ph archive, e.g. http://freespace.virgin.net/ch.thompson1/Papers/TheRec/TheRecord.htm/ or http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0210150 . I need to put my basic "Chaotic Ball" diagrams in wikipedia.
Meantime, as Roadrunner says, local realist models need to explain what is observed, which does, I admit, look remarkably like the text book "entanglement". This can be done, but requires a different model of light and a different way of modelling the output from a nonlinear crystal in "parametric down-conversion" (PDC). The only paper I have on the subject, though, is my own unpublished one, at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9912082.
I have been discussing these issues with the professional community for the past 10 years! If you notice, Shimony (of CHSH fame) references my 1996 paper in his new article at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/ . He does not anywhere claim that there is convincing evidence. He is currently placing his money on Fry et al's ideas for a "loophole-free" experiment. Tittel referenced one of my quant-ph papers in one of his articles on long-distance experiments in Geneva. But my ideas on PDC do come under the heading of original research, so I realise I can't mention them in the articles here. A pity! Some day, when the community eventually realises what the basic fair sampling loophole is all about, they will start looking again at what really happens and classical ideas on the behaviour of light resurrected and updated.
Actually, I think that what will turn heads is an experiment which produces an unambigious result that cannot be explained by QM. Since local realist models are incompatible with QM, then there should be a way of producing an experiment which conflicts with QM. I have a suspicion that this experiment probably has nothing to do with Bell's test. Also, I have a strong suspicion based on history that if this happens it will start with something weird experimental result that no one has any idea is connected with this issue.
What I was planning to do was after you get done with the Bell test loopholes, to point out why despite them, the physics community still largely thinks that QM is correct.

Roadrunner 03:51, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Roadrunner 03:51, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Caroline Thompson 08:52, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] SPDC

Amir Aczel's book mentions Parametric Down-Conversion; he also mentions how Aspect was unable to create a completely random source and had to create a periodic source from the lasers. That note in fact bothered me; how is it possible to claim complete collapse of a wave function when the source comes from continuous lasing. Ancheta Wis 20:26, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Aspect did not use SPDC, he used an atomic "radiative cascade", stimulated not by periodic laser pulses but by two continuous laser beams. It sounds as if Aczel got it a bit wrong. I don't pretend to know anything much about quantum theory, so can't comment on the collapse of the wave function. I have my own ideas about what really happened in Aspect's experiments, having read his PhD thesis, which gives a lot more detail than the published reports. See some of my ideas in http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9711044, or my page on local hidden variable theory.
Caroline Thompson 20:45, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Disintangling Bell's theorem and quantum entanglement

I did some work trying to distangle Bell's theorem from the topic of quantum entanglement. It's really easy to observe quantum entanglement. It's also really easy to come up with a local realist theory that explains quantum entanglement. However, that theory will give different predictions than QM, and the hard part is to observe those differences in an airtight way.

Caroline Thompson 10:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC) I don't think experiments will ever be airtight, but a combination of experiments and theory should eventually do the trick. Experiments could easily put the QM predictions in trouble. It's not that I would not expect QM to come up with some modification that would cover any experiment. It is a very flexible theory. If, however, you change the conditions for a Bell test experiment, it is very much easier to modify the corresponding hidden variable model than the quantum mechanical one. As it stands, the basic QM model does not cover easily (or covers but unless modified makes wrong predictions for):
Failure of rotational invariance
Asymmetries of various kinds
Variations in beam intensities
Use of different makes and/or settings of photodetectors
Indeed, one of my main grumbles is that one cannot find published the basic facts about the behaviour of photodetectors: how they really respond to changes in input intensity. Perhaps I have not looked hard enough, but the impression I get is that it is universally assumed that the response is exactly proportional — this despite known facts about dark counts when the input is zero and saturation when it is too intense.

Put briefly. Demonstrating that quantum entanglement occurs is easy. Demonstrating that quantum entanglement occurs in a way that local realist theories cannot explain is a much more difficult. This is an important distinction because I don't think that any of the experimental papers cited here did the latter. Also, I don't think that any of the real world applications of entanglement have anything to do with Bell's test (i.e. quantum cryptography would work fine even if QM was wrong in its details.)

Caroline Thompson 10:03, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)Yes, I know, and in fact even some of the things they do in relation to the development of quantum computing does not really need entanglement. Ordinary correlations would do.

Keep in mind that it took people about 40 years to figure out that you couldn't explain entanglement with a local realist theory.

Roadrunner 07:44, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

[edit] General Comments

Perhaps some kind soul could write a non-formal section explaining how particles become entangled and some of the interesting effects of entanglement. I am sorry to say that this article is incomprehensible to those of us who are not students of physics or who have had but a single year of college physics. I am also sorry to say that it seems to have gotten less comprehensible over the last year or so.

I realize that part of the reason I find this article so difficult to understand is the result of precision. Unfortunately, that precision has become excruciating.

I'm afraid the reason the page is incomprehensible is that it tries to explain something that does not actually happen! It reproduces some of the QM formalism, which, at the end of the day, is not based on any physical assumptions about how the entangled particles could possibly stay entangled. The fact is that there is no experimental evidence for entanglement that holds water. No actual experiment has ever violated a Bell test in "loophole-free" conditions, and every experiment I've looked at (which is quite a number) has had a fairly obvious alternative explanation in terms of ordinary variables, such as polarisation direction or phase difference, that are simply shared by both photons. Yes, lots of experiments reproduce the QM prediction, but, since local realist models can do the same (within the limits of experimental error), does this prove QM right? See Bell's theorem and linked pages, especially Bell test loopholes, Bell test experiments and Local hidden variable theory.
Some of the applications of entanglement may well bear fruit, but this does not prove the theory behind them is correct. They in fact all depend on some of the classical properties of light such as interference, together with some interesting correlations in the light output by parametric down conversion (the process whereby you get two lower-frequency photons output from a nonlinear crystal pumped by a laser). The apparently wonderful correlations seen are the effect of the combination of these physical properties with some algebraic, logical and geometrical facts related to the behaviour of ratios of counts when the things being counted have been selected by chosing only coincident pairs.
I'm not surprised that a year of a physics course is no help in understanding the page! A lifetime would not be enough to truly understand entanglement. The human mind is only capable of understanding something logical. It can learn the "facts" of QM by rote, but Bohr was merely stating the truth when he said that, effectively, if you think you've understood it you're wrong.
Anyway, I'm afraid that as things stand the only way to find out (some of) what really happens is by reading some of the articles on my web site or on the quantum physics archive. Several now cover the subject of the |Chaotic Ball model, which is, as even some experts agree, probably the best way to illustrate the above-mentioned logic, geometry etc.. No physics course covers the local realist approach. You will be lucky if they even mention loopholes.
Caroline Thompson 09:02, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)
It's my understanding that the current mainstream scientific consensus is that quantum entanglement does happen. Have you looked at the 2003 experiments I referenced? -- Beland 01:18, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)
I agree, BTW, that a layperson-friendly explanation is both possible and needed. -- Beland 01:20, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I've looked at one of the press releases you gave, re

Jiming Bao, Andrea V. Bragas, Jacek K. Furdyna and Roberto Merlin, "Optically induced multispin entanglement in a semiconductor quantum well", March 4 issue of Nature Materials.

The experiment looks fascinating, but they seem to be using the word "entanglement" to mean just ordinary correlation. There is no mention of having done a Bell test to establish it. Instead the press release says:

"In the experiments, the signature of entanglement involving m electrons is the detection of the mth-harmonic of the fundamental Zeeman frequency in the differential reflectivity data."

But at the end of the day it will be just such ordinary correlations that will be used in what they will call "quantum computing", which will never really use the kind of entanglement that can infringe Bell inequalities since this kind simply does not happen. We're at an impasse, I'm afraid. I should love to re-write the page but my version would not be about "quantum entanglement" as quantum theorists understand it. Their version exists only on paper and in their formulae.

Incidentally, I've read: M. Riebe et al, “Deterministic quantum teleportation with atoms”, Nature 429, 734-737 (2004) which was in the news recently. Here they establish entanglement by measuring "fidelity" which, they say, cannot exceed 66.7% under local realism. What, however, is one to make of this?

" ... obtained fidelities range from 73% to 76%. Teleportation based on a completely classical resource ... yields a maximum fidelity of 66.7% ... Note, however, that to rule out hidden variable theories, a fidelity in excess of 0.87 is required ..."

So they've established entanglement but not ruled out local realism! That's nonsense. I have not been able to find out quite what "fidelity" is, but judging from the context it seems to be much the same as "visibility", and tests based this depend on the assumption that the system obeys Malus' Law. I suspect that they never check this thoroughy. Caroline Thompson 09:13, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] idea for faster-than-light communication

I have an idea: Since by adding/taking any energy into one entangled particle would add/take away from the other, this would warp the fabric of gravitational spacetime. If you did this, you'd be able to measure this (perferably) infintesimal gravitational pull by placing a network of lasers and ultra-sensitive sensors, you might tell if data is sent. since this is minutely economical, you'dd want it in a sattelite or something of that sort. Iamdalto 09:13, 3 Sep 2004 (UTC)

[edit] External link may need to be *removed*

The external link provided at the end of the document titled "Quantum Entanglement For Dummies" I believe needs to be reviewed for credibility and accuracy by someone with a better understanding of this phenomenon. What I find disturbing is the aforementioned site refers the reader to the following article(towards the end just before his appendix): http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/1/2004/08/09/story001.html

From my understanding the author of this article is basing this idea on a gross misinterpretation of numerous facts and quantum entaglement it self. If the author of the page the external link points to found this to be a valuable resource I would question the judgement of that author and the wisdom of linking to this page, and thus indirectly having wikipedia endorsing something which amounts to science fiction.

However, note I have not done this myself. I am an undergraduate physics student and I am recommending that someone with some kind of credentials (better than mine) in this field review my suggestion and remove the link if my supposition is accurate. I feel it would be irresponsible for someone with my level of knowledge in the field to be editing an article on quantum entanglement.

Yes. Please remove it. Unfortunately, however well-intentioned the author of that article may have been, rather than being "Quantum Entanglement For Dummies" that page is "Quantum Entanglement by a Dummy". CSTAR 17:43, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Oh, okay, sorry about that. Guess I didn't do enough checking first. Cal 1234 15:23, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quantum Entanglement Illustrated

Hi,

The external link provided at the end of the document titled "Quantum Entanglement For Dummies" I believe needs to be reviewed for credibility and accuracy by someone with a

The document has been reviewed by many physicists with good knowledge of entanglement, including: Anton Zeilinger, Lov Grover, Helen Quinn, Anthony Seigmann, and Dr. Amir Aczel. If you'd like more, I can list other people and provide both contact information and their credentials. If you want someone else, then find someone else and e-mail the link. I'd be more than happy to change anything that isn't as technically accurate as it could be (which, by the way, is stated in the document), while maintaining my ultimate goal of having it readable by a general audience.

As far as I can tell by reading the article, in particular the comments attributed to them, saying the article has been "reviewed" by these people is a bit of a stretch. If you can point me to a website where said reviews exist, it would be helpful. Please see comment below about non-functioning link. --CSTAR 21:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

site refers the reader to the following article(towards the end just before his appendix): http://www.rednova.com/news/stories/1/2004/08/09/story001.html

First, why not ask me to remove the link? It is, after all, just one of many that I read. And, by the way, the page does not say the links are a valuable resource. It merely lists them in an appendix.

Second, you folks seem to forget that many things that seemed science fiction have become science fact. For example, using quantum entanglement for instantaneous communications seemed to be in the realm of science fiction -- Mother Nature was going to keep her secrets to herself. Using adiabatic perturbations of quantum particles, it may be possible to influence the statistics of the radioactive decay in a quantum entangled system.

misinterpretation of numerous facts and quantum entaglement it self. If the author of the page the external link points to found this to be a valuable resource I would question the judgement of that author and the wisdom of linking to this page ...

Powerfully astute logic: Judge the author based a single link, rather than judging the document as a whole. FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strawman

Yes. Please remove it. Unfortunately, however well-intentioned the author of that article may have been, rather than being "Quantum Entanglement For Dummies" that page is "Quantum Entanglement by a Dummy". CSTAR 17:43, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It's nice to see people being judged and summarily attacked.

However, even if I was a "dummy", this once again judges not the document for its content, but the author. These are two totally different logistical arguments. Do try to keep them separate.

Your referring to potential non-expert readers as dummies is no better (nor worse) than my referring to you the author (who states clearly his non-expert status in the article in question) as a dummy. If this is offensive, then I apolgize, but please change the name of your article. -CSTAR 21:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

And, for the record, is it too much to ask for a wee bit of maturity here?

Lastly, I noticed on a related page a call for an introduction to quantum entanglement for a general audience, which my document provides. It is not intended to be 100% technically accurate given that it is an ``introduction`` for the masses.

Remember labs in high school physics where wind and friction were not taken into consideration? My document is to get the point across, explain some basic physics, without mucking in technical details. And it does this astoundingly well, thank you very much.

Dave

I'm not going to comment about anything else in this discussion, but I'm fairly certain the following is false:
using quantum entanglement for instantaneous communications seemed to be in the realm of science fiction -- Mother Nature was going to keep her secrets to herself. Using adiabatic perturbations of quantum particles, it may be possible to influence the statistics of the radioactive decay in a quantum entangled system.
I'm not sure if this is referring to the quantum zeno effect, but in any case I'm almost completely certain that you won't be able to use it for instantaneous communications. But I don't see what this has to do with your website being factually inaccurate (or not). -- CYD

CYD,

My statement about stimulated triggering particles for instantaneous communications is partially based on the following:

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/physics/0503052

Their article has yet to be peer-reviewed, however their results look promising.

My main point, however, is that the external link to my site was removed for these main reasons (please correct me if I'm missing some, or have misrepresented them):

  1. The accuracy is in question
  2. There is a link to a related site whose content is quite questionable

I believe having Prof. Anton Zeilinger (http://www.quantum.univie.ac.at/) vouch for the site should be sufficient.

That link doesn't work. --CSTAR 21:36, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The "related" site link in question can be removed quite easily.

Lastly, Google currently ranks me at #2 -- below Stanford and above Wikipedia. I figured adding it to Wikipedia would improve the general understanding of quantum entanglement for the masses. Apparently people disagree. Fine with me. :-)

Have a good one, folks. Sorry we couldn't find a little synergy.

Dave

Umm, the preprint looks to be about plain old quantum teleportation. You can transmit information that way, but not faster than light. -- CYD

[edit] cause of entanglement

i dont understand why if a particle is observed to be spin up the other one must be down, what causes that?

Because that's the way it actually woks when you try it in real life. QM is used as the explanation for how this "real life" works.linas 21:41, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cause of entanglement #2

I don't understand why quantum entanglement would necessitate "spooky action at a distance"... Isn't it possible that the "entangled" photons are just behaving deterministically and thus appear to be interconnected without actually being so? Rōnin 02:41, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

No, if they did behave deterministacally, it would violate Bell's inequality. This idea you propose is called local realism, and Bell's inequalit demonstrates that lcal realism is incompativble with QM. 21:39, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
That isn't quite what I'm proposing. I'm asking whether the two photons could simply behaving deterministically, which isn't incompatible with the idea of local realism, but isn't dependent on it either. Imagine that I have a green ball and a yellow ball and hide them under two cups. If I discover the green ball under one cup, I can assume that there will be a yellow ball under the other because the two balls always have a different value, without invoking quantum mechanics. One could imagine that something similar could happen when one splits photons. I realize there may be good reasons for assuming the photons are really interacting across a distance, and it's those reasons that I'm inquiring about. Rōnin 22:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
This is exactly what "local realism" is. Local realism says that, under one cup, the ball "really is yellow", but we won't know till we look. I'm not sure what the article on local realism states; if its not clear, then I guess it should be fixed. Maybe this needs to be clarified hree too? Anyway, this is why non-physcists like local realism: QM states that the ball really really is green and yellow "at the same time", until you look, and some people really hate that. linas 00:29, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Slight correction, linas: the ball cannot be said to be either green or yellow till you look at it. Dave Kielpinski 14:32, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
But does anyone know why the explanation provided by quantum mechanics is preferred over the one I just proposed? Stating that it's incompatible with quantum mechanics is rather obvious, but it doesn't provide any explanation. Rōnin 14:19, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Because local realism predicts different outcomes than QM for certain experiments; those experiments have been performed, and QM "won". The two predictions are compared in Bell's inequality. Your green/yellow shell-game example predicts the same answer as QM when the polarizers are aligned; but if they are off at a different angle, the predictions differ significantly. linas 20:05, 14 January 2006 (UTC)
Ah, thank you. What we need is obviously a ban on unaligned polarizers, then. ;) Anyway, thanks for humouring me. This issue is such an interesting one. Rōnin 17:17, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quantum Entanglement not violating speed of light

The reasons why Quantum Entanglement can't be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light are really subtle (and really interesting!). This is just another plea for an expert to step in and explain this as well as possible. And no, I'm not even close to being that expert -- I just think it's probably the most important concept in this whole article.

-- Perhaps the best plain-English explanation of why QE cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light, and also why Quantum Teleportation cannot be used to transmit information faster than the speed of light as well:

Photons cannot exceed the speed of light.

Think of it this way: Point A, the origin point where the photon(s) is (are) born, encodes some information on it (them) as spin. The photon(s) then travel (according to our frame of reference) at the speed of light to it's (their) respective destination(s), Point B (and Point C), where it (they) is (are) measured.

To our frame of reference, information is transmitted from point A to point B( and perhaps C). Information is never transmitted between point B and point C - they are receiving copies of what is transmitted from A. Point B /does not/ get to choose which way it modulates the photon, which would allow it to transmit information to C - it only gets to choose which way it measures the photon. C gets to choose which way it measures the photon as well. Whether they do so "correctly" for the purposes of decoding what was sent by A is a side issue.

The confusion comes up because B can know what state the photon at C will be by measuring its' own photon. This produces a human illusion known as the "speed of bad news". If two people read the same newspaper story, and come to the same conclusion, was information transmitted between the two? No. It can be /thought of that way/ - it doesn't mean it actually is.

Further, to complicate things - in the frame of reference of the photon(s), zero time elapses between creation and destruction (measurement), and according to quantum mechanics, they may be thought of as the same particle because they share the same frame of reference. This does not mean they /actually/ are the same particle.

This brings forth the confusion of thinking of them as /actually/ being the same particle in the minds of many people.

To whit: Quantum mechanics is a descriptive theory, and (as has been stated before) is counter-intuitive. Be careful to separate what is described and what is predicted by the model.

-- The "spooky action at a distance" is a function of the system as well - another "speed of bad news" illusion. To the frame of reference of the photon(s), its' (their) state(s) are set at creation, which also happens - to their frame of reference - to be the same as destruction (measurement). The photon(s)'s frame of reference is linked between the 'creation' point and the destruction point(s). To our frame of reference, it still takes time, and "different amounts of time", for the photon(s) to reach their destination(s). One could think of it as taking some time for point C to reach the frame of reference of the photon(s).

As far as the photon's frame of reference is concerned, it involves no distance and 'time' is irrelevant.

It still requires a "conventional" channel for points c and b to discuss their measurements.

[edit] entanglement vs. decoherence

Asking "How can I keep these 2 particles entangled as long as possible?" is the same as asking "How can I delay the decoherence of these 2 particles as long as possible?", right?

Yes, that is right. linas 21:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Would it make any sense to merge quantum entanglement and quantum decoherence into a single article?

--DavidCary 18:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

Naively, yes; in practice, no. That's because then you'd have one article that's twice as long. These are related ideas, but, already, one can say quite a bit (and more) about each. linas 21:36, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] q. crypto ...

I think that the comment "quantum entanglement is the basis of ... quantum cryptography" is a little too strong - the photon polarisation model of q.crypto doesn't depend on entanglement.

It's possible to use entanglement instead of polarisation to build a q.crypto system, but I don't think it's fair to say it's the basis of it ... (unsigned comment from User:YojimboSan 17 January 2006)

I fail to understand this comment. Aren't the polarized photons entangled? There's no crypto encoding unless both parties receive a message encoded with the same key, viz. a pair of entangled photons. The polarization of a photon is its spin. The details for photon entanglement are ever so slightly more complex than the case for spin-1/2 described in this article, but its essentially the same thing. linas 05:55, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
Not quite, linas. The BB84 quantum crypto protocol only requires polarized single photons to be transmitted, not entangled pairs. The secrecy of the key distribution arises because any eavesdropper increases the polarization noise in the channel. The noise can be detected by looking at the correlations of a subset of the transmitted information. So you always know when an eavesdropper is present. Dave Kielpinski 12:31, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Ahh. Right, thanks. linas 14:27, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Unanswered questions?

Maybe these will be considered silly questions, but I really want to understand this concept:

1. Are the entangled particles considered to be in a state of quantum superposition before a measurement on any of them has been conducted?

2. I found some confusion on this subjects by non-physicists - if one of the particles, after being measured, is having it's quantum state altered (if actually possible or only theoretically), will the entangled particle reflect that change?

Thank you! Nate --85.64.39.51 23:51, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Reply:
1. superposition should not be confused with entanglement. any quantum state is, in general, a superposition.
entanglement is possible only in a composite system. superposition says quantum states are elements of a linear space. entanglement has to do with property of tensor product of linear spaces. not the same.
2. not quite clear what you're asking. take the simplest case. if you have a separable pure state P \otimes Q, and you perform a local measurement on, say , the second subsystem. then Q would, in general, collapse to some eigenstate of the observable you're measuring. clearly the composite state now changes as well.
Mct mht 00:15, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. I got the picture on the first issue, apparently I have misunderstood the Quantum State term.
2. I have explored several websites and there were quite a few that made this kind of assumption about Quantum Entanglement:
Assuming you have a pair of entangled particles. Now one of the particles has been measured, therefore we now know the value of the other entangled particle as well. But then (after the measurements have been done) we go and change the properties of one of those particles. Will the other entangled particle reflect that new change in properties?
Nate --85.64.39.51 00:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
more technical details and context is needed in your question for a precise answer. the phenomenon you speak of is not an assumption. it's a physical fact. take a typical example. say a composite system is in a bell state(therefore maximally entangled) and a local measurement(say in the z-axis of the first subsystem) is performed. part of reason that, after that measurement, you can infer from the state of first subsystem that of the second is that, after measurement, the composite system collapses to a product state, i.e. separable. once the composite system is in a separable state, i.e. once entanglement is broken, what you do locally to one will not effect the other. Mct mht 01:31, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok now I understand perfectly. So In fact the process of collapsing the system to a product state by it's nature breaks the entanglement. This should be noted in the article. Browsing the net I found that many simple-minded persons tend to misunderstand this "entanglement" as some kind of "supernatural" link between the particles where they can "read each other's mind" on a regular basis, which obviously is not the case ;)
Nate --85.64.39.51 01:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
the existence of entanglement simply follows from the fact that, given two linear spaces V1 and V2, not every vector in the tensor product V_1 \otimes V_2 takes the form v_1 \otimes v_2 for some v_i \in V_i. those nonproduct states are called entangled. Mct mht 02:12, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] spukhafte Fernwirkungen (spooky action at a distance) - citation?

Almost every article I've read on entanglement (including this wiki entry) contains this quote from Einstein, but I've yet to come across any article that contains a citation of the quotation's original printed source. Does one even exist, or is this just something that Einstein was once heard to say? I actually need to find the original reference for this, so I'm grateful for any illumination.

[edit] Suggestion to merge with Quantum coherence

The Wikipedia has articles on Quantum Entanglement as well as Quantum Coherence. Both these are basically the same concept. So there should really be only one article. Unfortunately, at present the two articles do not even cite each other. Even if I am wrong, and the two concepts are not identical, at least they are very closely related to each other. I will look forward to other people's comments on this point. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 220.227.48.17 (talk • contribs) .

I moved your comment to the bottom to keep it in chronological order, and I added templates to the articles to get more attention. I think Quantum coherence should be merged into this article or Coherence (physics), but I'm not sure which. —Keenan Pepper 23:39, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
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