Avoiding Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Paradox: Towards a More Physically Adequate Description of a Quantum State
Joseph Bernal, Olga M. Kosheleva, Владик Крейнович
The famous EPR paradox shows that if we describe quantum particles in the usual way -- by their wave functions -- then we get the following seeming contradiction. If we entangle the states of the two particles, then move them far away from each other, and measure the state of the first particle, then the state of the second particle immediately changes -- which contradicts to special relativity, according to which such immediate-action-at-a-distance is not possible. It is known that, from the physical viewpoint, this is not a real paradox: if we measure any property of the second particle, the results will not change whether we perform the measurement on the first particle or not. What the above argument shows is that the usual wave function description of a quantum state does not always adequately describe the corresponding physics. In this paper, we propose a new, more physically adequate description of a quantum state, a description in which there is no EPR paradox: measurements performed at the first particle does not change the state of the remote second one.
•Jan 1, 2019•0 citations