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Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE

Photon statistics: math versus mysticism

Aloysius F. Kracklauer

Published Oct 1, 2013• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Critical analysis is given for mystical aspects of the current understanding of interaction between charged particles: wave-particle duality and nonlocal entanglement. A possible statistical effect concerning distribution functions for coincidences between the output channels of beam splitters is described. If this effect is observed in beam splitter data, ten significant evidence for photon splitting, i.e. , against the notion that light is ultimately packaged in finite chunks, has been found. An argument is given for the invalidity of the meaning attached to tests of Bell inequalities. Additionally, a totally classical paradigm for the calculation of the customary expression for the “quantum” coincidence coefficient pertaining to the singlet state is described. If fully accounts for the results of experimental tests of Bell inequalities taken nowadays to prove the reality of entanglement and non-locality in quantum phenomena of, inter alia, light. Described. It fully accounts for the results of experimental tests of Bell inequalities take n nowadays to prove the reality of entanglement and non-locality in quantum phenomena of inter alia, light.

DOI
10.1117/12.2022718

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Critical analysis is given for mystical aspects of the current understanding of interaction between charged particles: wave-particle duality and nonlocal entanglement. A possible statistical effect concerning distribution functions for coincidences between the output channels of beam splitters is described. If this effect is observed in beam splitter data, ten significant evidence for photon splitting, i.e. , against the notion that light is ultimately packaged in finite chunks, has been found. An argument is given for the invalidity of the meaning attached to tests of Bell inequalities. Additionally, a totally classical paradigm for the calculation of the customary expression for the “quantum” coincidence coefficient pertaining to the singlet state is described. If fully accounts for the results of experimental tests of Bell inequalities taken nowadays to prove the reality of entanglement and non-locality in quantum phenomena of, inter alia, light. Described. It fully accounts for the results of experimental tests of Bell inequalities take n nowadays to prove the reality of entanglement and non-locality in quantum phenomena of inter alia, light.
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Abstract The Mach–Zehnder interferometer experiment described earlier shows why and how quantum mechanics is different from classical mechanics. A photon sent through a beam splitter behaves like a particle when it is observed by only one of the two detectors. When two beam splitters are used, the photon “interferes with itself” and behaves like a wave. This is the so-called wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics which leads to quantum entanglement. This chapter discusses quantum superpositions when two or more particles are present. Understanding and analysing entanglement is one of the most interesting directions in the field of quantum information. First, a historical background of quantum entanglement is given, followed by a discussion on Bell's inequalities, separable states that do not violate Bell's inequalities, pure states that violate Bell's inequalities, mixed states that do not violate Bell's inequalities, and entanglement in second quantisation.
The main aim of this review is to show that the common conclusion that Bell's argument implies that any attempt to proceed beyond quantum mechanics induces a nonlocal model was not totally justified. Our analysis of Bell's argument demonstrates that violation of Bell's inequality implies neither "death of realism" nor nonlocality. This violation is just a sign of non-Kolmogorovness of statistical data - impossibility to put statistical data collected in a few different experiments (corresponding to incompatible settings of polarization beam splitters) in one probability space. This inequality was well known in theoretical probability since 19th century (from works of Boole). We couple non-Kolmogorovness of data with design of modern detectors of photons.
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Quantum nonlocality is presented often as the most remarkable and inexplicable phenomenon known to modern science. It has been known already for a long time that the probabilistic models used to prove Bell and Clauser-Horn-Shimony-Holt inequalities (BI-CHSH) for spin polarization correlation experiments (SPCE) are incompatible with the experimental protocols of SPCE. In particular these models use the same common probability space, joint probability distributions and/or conditional independence to describe coincidence experiments in incompatible experimental settings. Strangely enough these results are not known or simply neglected. This is why we will once again reanalyze Bell locality assumptions and show that they have nothing to do with the notion of Einsteinian locality therefore their violation should not be called quantum nonlocality but rather quantum non-Kolmogorovness or quantum contextuality. Moreover if local variables describing the measuring instruments are correctly taken into account then BI-CHSH can no longer be proven and one can easily construct non-signaling probabilistic models able to reproduce the predictions of QT. The violation of BI-CHSH is considered usually as a proof that a quantum state is entangled. Since BI-CHSH are violated also in some experiments from outside the domain of quantum physics therefore the entanglement is not exclusively a quantum phenomenon. In order to further demystify these notions we show that one can prepare two macroscopic systems in such a way that simple realizable local experiments on these systems violate BI. In view of these arguments the further testing of BI-CHSH inequalities in search for the loopholes does not seem to be necessary.