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arXiv:1510.06712

A Live Alternative to Quantum Spooks

Huw Price, K. B. Wharton

Published Oct 22, 2015• 14 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Quantum weirdness has been in the news recently, thanks to an ingenious new experiment by a team led by Roland Hanson, at the Delft University of Technology. Much of the coverage presents the experiment as good (even conclusive) news for spooky action-at-a-distance, and bad news for local realism. We point out that this interpretation ignores an alternative, namely that the quantum world is retrocausal. We conjecture that this loophole is missed because it is confused for superdeterminism on one side, or action-at-a-distance itself on the other. We explain why it is different from these options, and why it has clear advantages, in both cases.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1510.06712

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Quantum weirdness has been in the news recently, thanks to an ingenious new experiment by a team led by Roland Hanson, at the Delft University of Technology. Much of the coverage presents the experiment as good (even conclusive) news for spooky action-at-a-distance, and bad news for local realism. We point out that this interpretation ignores an alternative, namely that the quantum world is retrocausal. We conjecture that this loophole is missed because it is confused for superdeterminism on one side, or action-at-a-distance itself on the other. We explain why it is different from these options, and why it has clear advantages, in both cases.
A recent experiment yielding results in agreement with quantum theory and violating Bell inequalities was interpreted [Nature 526 (29 Octobert 2015) p. 682 and p. 649] as ruling out any local realistic theory of nature. But quantum theory itself is both local and realistic when properly interpreted using a quantum Hilbert space rather than the classical hidden variables used to derive Bell inequalities. There is no spooky action at a distance in the real world we live in if it is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics.
We analyze foundational consequences of recently announced loophole free tests of violation of Bell's inequality. We consider two interpretations of these remarkable experiments. By the conventional one Einstein was wrong and Bohr was right, there is spooky action at a distance, quantum realism is incompatible with locality. However, we show that it is still possible to treat quantum mechanics without appealing to nonlocality or denying realism. We hope that this note will attract attention of the experts in quantum foundations and convince them to come with their own comments on the final Bell's test.
We analyze foundational consequences of recently reported loophole free tests of violation of Bell's inequality. We consider two interpretations of these remarkable experiments. The conventional one is “Einstein was wrong and Bohr was right, there is spooky action at a distance, quantum realism is incompatible with locality.” However, in line with discussions in literature during last decade, we show that it is still possible to treat quantum mechanics without appealing to nonlocality or denying realism. We hope that this note will call the attention of experts in quantum foundations and convince them that the case is not closed, so that they should come with their own comments on the status of the final Bell test.
The present book takes the discovery that quantum-like behaviour is not solely reserved to atomic particles one step further. If electrons are modelled as vibrating droplets instead of the usually assumed point objects, and if the classical laws of nature are applied, then exactly the same behaviour as in quantum theory is found, quantitatively correct! The world of atoms is strange and quantum mechanics, the theory of this world, is almost magic. Or is it? Tiny droplets of oil bouncing round on a fluid surface can also mimic the world of quantum mechanics. For the layman - for whom the main part of this book is written - this is good news. If the everyday laws of nature can conspire to show up quantum-like phenomena, there is hope to form mental pictures how the atomic world works. The book is almost formula-free, and explains everything by using many sketches and diagrams. The mathematical derivations underlying the main text are kept separate in a -peer reviewed - appendix. The author, a retired professor of Flight Mechanics and Propulsion at the Delft University of Technology, chose to publish his findings in this mixed popular and scientific form, because he found that interested laymen more often than professional physicists feel the need to form visualisations of quantum phenomena.
Spooky Action at a Distance In the context of correlation experiments involving pairs of experiments performed at very nearly the same time in very far-apart experimental regions, Einstein famously said [1], But on one supposition we should in my opinion hold absolutely fast: “The real factual situation of the system S2 is independent of what is done with system S1 which is spatially separated from the former.” This demand is incompatible with the basic ideas of standard (Copenhagen/orthodox) quantum mechanics, which makes two relevant claims: (1) Experimenters in the two labs make “local free choices” that determine which experiments will be performed in their respective labs. These choices are free in the sense of not being predetermined by the prior history of the physically described aspects of the universe, and they are localized in the sense that the physical effects of these free choices are inserted into the physically described aspects of the universe only within the laboratory in which the associated experiment is being performed. (2) These choices of what is done with the system being measured in one lab can (because of a measurement-induced global collapse of the quantum state) influence the outcome of the experiment performed at very close to the same time in the very faraway lab. This influence of what is done with the system being measured in one region upon the outcome appearing at very nearly the same time in a very faraway lab was called “spooky action at a distance” by Einstein, and was rejected by him as a possible feature of “reality.” John Bell's Quasi-classical Statistical Theory Responding to the seeming existence in the quantum world of “spooky actions,” John Bell [2] proposed a possible alternative to the standard approach that might conceivably be able to reconcile quantum spookiness with “reality.” This alternative approach rests on the fact that quantum mechanics is a statistical theory.We already have in physics a statistical theory called “classical statistical mechanics.”