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Journal of Physics Conference Series

Quantum entanglement, Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment and its explanation on the basis of quantization of fields

Alexey V. Melkikh

Published Aug 1, 2017• 2 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The result of Wheeler's delayed choice experiment is a natural consequence of the entanglement of moving photons and particles (atoms, molecules) of the slit through which they move. The inclusion of quantum fields (taking into account that speed of virtual particles is not limited) self-consistently explains why interaction's propagation velocity after closing one slit is larger than the speed of light.

DOI
10.1088/1742-6596/880/1/012030

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The result of Wheeler's delayed choice experiment is a natural consequence of the entanglement of moving photons and particles (atoms, molecules) of the slit through which they move. The inclusion of quantum fields (taking into account that speed of virtual particles is not limited) self-consistently explains why interaction's propagation velocity after closing one slit is larger than the speed of light.
It is well known that Wheeler proposed several delayed choice experiments in order to show the impossibility to speak of the way a quantum system behaves before being detected. In a double-slit experiment, when do photons decide to travel by one way or by two ways? Delayed choice experiments seem to indicate that, strangely, it is possible to change the decision of the photons until the very last moment before they are detected. This led Wheeler to his famous sentence: No elementary quantum phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is a registered phenomenon, brought to a close by an irreversible act of amplification. Nevertheless some authors wrote that backward in time effects were needed to explain these results. I will show that in delayed choice experiments involving only one particle, a simple explanation is possible without invoking any backward in time effect. Delayed choice experiments involving entangled particles such as the so called quantum eraser can also be explained without invoking any backward in time effect but I will argue that these experiments cannot be accounted for so simply because they rise the whole problem of knowing what a measurement and a collapse are. A previously presented interpretation, Convivial Solipsism, is a natural framework for giving a simple explanation of these delayed choice experiments with entangled particles. In this paper, I show how Convivial Solipsism helps clarifying the puzzling questions raised by the collapse of the wave function of entangled systems.
Delaying Quantum Choice Photons can display wavelike or particle-like behavior, depending on the experimental technique used to measure them. Understanding this duality lies at the heart of quantum mechanics. In two reports, Peruzzo et al. (p. 634 ) and Kaiser et al. (p. 637 ; see the Perspective on both papers by Lloyd ) perform an entangled version of John Wheeler's delayed-choice gedanken experiment, in which the choice of detection can be changed after a photon passes through a double-slit to avoid the measurement process affecting the state of the photon. The original proposal allowed the wave and particle nature of light to be interchanged after the light had entered the interferometer. By contrast in this study, entanglement allowed the wave and particle nature to be interchanged after the light was detected and revealed the quantum nature of the photon, for example, it displays wave- and particle-like behavior simultaneously.
In this paper, we shall describe the delayed-choice experiment first proposed by Wheeler and then analyze the experiment based on both our interpretation of what is happening and the Wheeler/Feynman interpretation. Our interpretation includes wave-function collapse due to a measurement, while the Wheeler/Feynman interpretation attempts to avoid wave-function collapse in a measurement, as part of their explanation, to preserve consistent unitarity. in quantum processes. We will also show that there are severe consequences for quantum computing if there is no wave function collapse due to a measurement.
The delayed-choice entanglement swapping experiments, both in space and time, are casually explained at a single quantum level by using the `wave-particle non-dualistic interpretation of quantum mechanics'. In order to achieve this, the actual mechanisms involved in the Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment and Einstein's spooky-action-at-a-distance are uncovered from the quantum formalism. The continuity in the motion of any individual quantum particle, due to the constants of motion, is responsible for the outcomes of Wheeler's delayed-choice experiment. The purpose for the existence of spooky action in Nature is to strictly maintain the conservation laws in absence of exchange-interactions. The presence of a casual structure in the entanglement swapping is shown by detailed analysis of the experimental results presented in the papers, ``X-S. Ma et al., Nature. Phys. 8, 480, (2012)'' and ``E. Megidish et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 210403 (2013)'', at the level of individual quantum events. These experiments are directly confirming the wave-particle non-duality.
We construct a quantum bit commitment scheme using a double-slit setup similar to Wheeler's delayed choice experiment. Bob sends photons toward the double-slit, and Alice commits by determining either the slit from which each photon emerges (for b=0b=0b=0), or its landing position on a screen (for b=1b=1b=1). Since the photon's wave front expands at the speed of light, Alice cannot delay the detection indefinitely, or it would very soon be out of her control no matter how much resources she has.