Entanglement, Non-locality and Hidden Variables
There is much confusion about the meaning of entanglement, non-locality and hidden variables and how they relate to each other. As described above, entanglement is an experimentally verified and accepted property of nature. Non-locality and hidden variables are two proposed mechanisms that enable the effects of entanglement.
If the objects are indeterminate until one of them is measured, then the question becomes, "How can one account for something that was at one point indefinite with regard to its spin (or whatever is in this case the subject of investigation) suddenly becoming definite in that regard even though no physical interaction with the second object occurred, and, if the two objects are sufficiently far separated, could not even have had the time needed for such an interaction to proceed from the first to the second object?" The answer to the latter question involves the issue of locality, i.e., whether for a change to occur in something the agent of change has to be in physical contact (at least via some intermediary such as a field force) with the thing that changes. Study of entanglement brings into sharp focus the dilemma between locality and the completeness or lack of completeness of quantum mechanics.
In the media and popular science, quantum non-locality is often portrayed as being equivalent to entanglement. While it is true that a bipartite quantum state must be entangled in order for it to produce non-local correlations, there exist entangled states that do not produce such correlations. A well-known example of this is the Werner state that is entangled for certain values of, but can always be described using local hidden variables. In short, entanglement of a two-party state is necessary but not sufficient for that state to be non-local. It is important to recognise that entanglement is more commonly viewed as an algebraic concept, noted for being a precedent to non-locality as well as to quantum teleportation and to superdense coding, whereas non-locality is defined according to experimental statistics and is much more involved with the foundations and interpretations of quantum mechanics.
Read more about this topic: Quantum Entanglement
Famous quotes containing the words hidden and/or variables:
“The chess-board is the world; the pieces are the phenomena of the universe; the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)
“The variables of quantification, ‘something,’ ‘nothing,’ ‘everything,’ range over our whole ontology, whatever it may be; and we are convicted of a particular ontological presupposition if, and only if, the alleged presuppositum has to be reckoned among the entities over which our variables range in order to render one of our affirmations true.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)