I mean you can setup a source of entangled particles and two very far detectors that would do measurements roughly at the same time on each particle in such a way that information wouldn’t have time to travel the distance between both detectors
You can then just gather roughly simultaneous measurements and at a later time join the datasets from both detectors to see what one measured vs the other for each pair.
If I understand correctly the current observations show that collapsing the state of one of the particle influences the other all the way at the other detector. Since there’s no hidden variables that predetermine the result of measurements it means the result of the collapse is random, and the fact that particles still respect the correlation over any distance is why there seem to be a FTL communication between the particles.
Something has to be communicated between the particles for the influence to work FTL, but it also seem we cannot leverage this phenomenon to send “actual information” this way :/
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 5 months ago
I fully understand the concept of entanglement and the experiments you mention, but I’m still to understand what you mean when you say “something” is being transmitted between the particles.
As you say, this “something” cannot contain information, and it also cannot influence the particle physically, since there is no way to distinguish the physical state of the particle before and after it receives this “something”. So the signal contains nothing, and has no effect on physical reality. That sounds a lot like “nothing” rather than “something”.
I completely get the argument that somehow the two particles must agree on what result to give, but in the theory this is just a consequence of how entanglement and measurements work. No transmission required.
wkk@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The message transferred between the particles supposedly FTL does contain information though. What I meant was that we cannot encode our own arbitrary information on top of it. The message has a physical effect on reality, without it the state we find the particles in cannot be respected.
Just reconsider this: If we agree that the result of a measurement is totally random (no hidden variable predetermining the result of the measurement) but that once we measure and know the state of one particle then we know with certainty the state of the other particle (entanglement): information about the collapse of the first measured particle was shared to the other so that it’s no longer random.
SmoothOperator@lemmy.world 5 months ago
The “message” does not have any local effect on reality - when you measure your particle, you have no way of figuring out if its partner was already measured elsewhere. The effect it does have is on the global state, maintaining the correlation that was encoded from the start.
If you write up the density matrix for the system before and after measurement of one of the particles, you can see that while the density matrix changes, it does not change in a way one can measure.
What I will concede is that before the first measurement the global state is |00>+|11>, afterwards it is |00> or |11>. This projection appears to happen instantaneously, no matter the distance, which is indeed faster than light.
But calling the wave function collapse a signal or a message or a transfer of information is misleading, I would say. In your example, we know that the initial state is |00>+|11>, and that the result of the first measurement is then, say, 1. Then no further information is required to know that the other measurement will result in 1. No messages required, no hidden variables, simply the process of elimination.
I would like to say that this is indeed a confusing subject, but that the math is clear, and that I am arguing what is my impression of the mainstream view in the field.