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Journal of Modern Physics

A Present Day Perspective on Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen and Its Consequences

Jeremy Dunning-Davies

Published Jan 1, 2021• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Ever since it first appeared in 1935, the famous paper by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, questioning the completeness of quantum mechanics as a theory, has courted controversy. The initial arguments with Bohr have never been forgotten or gone away; the ideas of Bell have remained; many experiments have been performed purporting to support the stance of Bohr. More recently, however, an experiment performed by a group in Basel has questioned this accepted position and, theoretically, this new perspective has received support from at least two sources. It is the work behind these two sources, especially the second, together with the experimental work at Basel, which form the basis for this examination of the present position as far as this extremely important position for physical science is concerned. Needless to say, considering the views expressed in these two approaches, it is also necessary and appropriate to consider some possible consequences if this new view becomes accepted. Due to the fact that the recent support for the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen argument makes use of results in iso-mathematics, iso-mechanics and iso-chemistry, these possible consequences include the exact representation of nuclear data, the achievement of an attractive force between identical valence electrons with the ensuing exact representation of molecular data, the prediction of new clean energies and the prediction of the possible recycling of nuclear waste via stimulated decay—none of which is allowable utilising traditional quantum mechanics. Hence here, as well as discussing the resolution of the long standing issue provoked by the well-known Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen article, some of these consequences will be discussed with a view to provoking more general, open-minded discussion within the scientific community.

DOI
10.4236/jmp.2021.127056

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Ever since it first appeared in 1935, the famous paper by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen, questioning the completeness of quantum mechanics as a theory, has courted controversy. The initial arguments with Bohr have never been forgotten or gone away; the ideas of Bell have remained; many experiments have been performed purporting to support the stance of Bohr. More recently, however, an experiment performed by a group in Basel has questioned this accepted position and, theoretically, this new perspective has received support from at least two sources. It is the work behind these two sources, especially the second, together with the experimental work at Basel, which form the basis for this examination of the present position as far as this extremely important position for physical science is concerned. Needless to say, considering the views expressed in these two approaches, it is also necessary and appropriate to consider some possible consequences if this new view becomes accepted. Due to the fact that the recent support for the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen argument makes use of results in iso-mathematics, iso-mechanics and iso-chemistry, these possible consequences include the exact representation of nuclear data, the achievement of an attractive force between identical valence electrons with the ensuing exact representation of molecular data, the prediction of new clean energies and the prediction of the possible recycling of nuclear waste via stimulated decay—none of which is allowable utilising traditional quantum mechanics. Hence here, as well as discussing the resolution of the long standing issue provoked by the well-known Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen article, some of these consequences will be discussed with a view to provoking more general, open-minded discussion within the scientific community.
ASPECTS OF THE DEBATE The debate between Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein concerning the interpretation of quantum mechanics extended from the fifth Solvay Conference in 1927 until the end of Einstein's life. The most dramatic exchange occurred in 1935, when Einstein, in collaboration with B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, published a paper in Physical Review entitled “Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?”, concluding with a negative answer, and Bohr replied in the same journal, with a paper of the same title but giving a positive answer. Their arguments were restated, in some respects with greater clarity, in the Library of Living Philosophers volume on Einstein in 1949. The disagreements between Bohr and Einstein concerned not only the physical question expressed in the common title of their papers, but also philosophical questions about physical reality and human knowledge. Much light was thrown upon the Bohr–Einstein debate by the theorem of J. S. Bell (1964) and the experiments which it inspired. Bell showed that any physical theory which applies to a pair of spatially separated systems (as considered in the thought experiment of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen) and satisfies a certain locality condition will, in certain circumstances, disagree statistically with quantum mechanics. Consequently, the supplementation of the quantum mechanical description envisaged by Einstein and his collaborators (usually referred to as a “hidden variables theory”) must either violate the locality condition or clash with quantum mechanical predictions.
The famously controversial 1935 paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) took aim at the heart of the flourishing field of quantum mechanics. The paper provoked responses from the leading theoretical physicists of the day, and brought entanglement and nonlocality to the forefront of discussion. This book looks back at the seminal year in which the EPR paper was published and explores the intense debate it unleashed. These conversations in print and in private correspondence offer significant insight into the minds of pioneering quantum physicists including Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein himself. Offering the most complete collection of sources to date – many published or translated here for the first time – this text brings a rich new context to this pivotal moment in physics history. Both researchers and students in the history and philosophy of science, and enthusiasts alike, will find this book illuminating.
Assessment of Einstein's argument Is quantum mechanics complete and local … It was observed in §1.4 that Einstein's method of criticizing the orthodox view of quantum theory was to focus on examples whose special characteristics could be used to show that adherence to the completeness assumption compels one to adopt ‘unnatural theoretical interpretations’. It was a way not of disproving the conventional interpretation by attempting to locate in it some logical flaw, but of pushing it into a corner that in Einstein's view no one would seriously want to inhabit. The paper of Einstein, Podolsky & Rosen (EPR) (1935) is the most famous component of this programme and the purpose of this chapter is to analyse the extent to which the arguments presented in it are compatible with the quantum theory of motion. From contemporaneous correspondence it appears that the EPR paper was written by Podolsky and that Einstein did not consider that the point which was really troubling him had been made explicit (Fine, 1986, Chap. 3). According to Einstein's accounts, EPR had the following purpose: to show that if one believes the wavefunction exhausts all the statements that can be meaningfully asserted about a physical system, then one must also accept that the real physical state of the system depends on what befalls another system with which it has previously interacted, no matter how far apart the two systems may become.
The chapter discusses Bohr’s response to the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen criticism of quantum mechanics, illuminating the clash between Bohr’s approach, firmly grounded in the existing experimental context, and Einstein’s prescient philosophical concerns. Given its accord with Ernst Mach’s influential double-aspect philosophical view, Bohr’s broader philosophical argument reads as a conventional piece of philosophical thought aimed at further clarifying the account already produced by the inductive process.
The famously controversial 1935 paper by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) took aim at the heart of quantum mechanics. The paper provoked responses from leading theoretical physicists of the day, and brought entanglement and nonlocality to the forefront of discussion. This book looks back at when the EPR paper was published and explores those intense. conversations in print and in private correspondence. These offer significant insight into the minds of pioneering quantum physicists, including Bohr, Schrödinger and Einstein himself. Offering the most complete collection of sources to date – many published or translated here for the first time – this text brings a rich new context to this pivotal moment in physics history.
On 25 March 1935, the Physical Review received a paper from Albert Einstein, Boris Podolsky, and Nathan Rosen, with the title “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete?” A few days later, on 30 March 1935, I was born. My life with Einstein was off to a promising start. Some would call it an inauspicious start. Abraham Pais, for example, says in his otherwise admirable biography of Einstein [1] that “the only part of this article that will ultimately survive, I believe, is this last phrase [ No reasonable definition of reality could be expected to permit this ], which so poignantly summarizes Einstein's views on quantum mechanics in his later years.” But today, in this centenary of the Einstein annus mirabilis, as the EPR paper and I both turn 70, it is, in fact, the most cited of all Einstein's papers [2]. The debate over its conceptual implications rages hotter than ever, and for the first time, practical (well, for the moment still gedanken practical) applications of the EPR effect have emerged in cryptography and in other areas of quantum information processing. Being only five weeks old, I was unprepared to pay attention to the article that appeared in the New York Times on 4 May 1935 under an elaborate set of headlines and subheads: And I was completely oblivious to the stern rebuke from Einstein himself, published three days later in the Times , which declared that “any information upon which the article … is based was given to you without my authority. It is my invariable practice to discuss scientific matters only in the appropriate forum and I deprecate advance publication of any announcement in regard to such matters in the secular press.” Apparently Podolsky had tipped off the Times to the article, which did not appear in the sacred press until the 15 May issue of Physical Review. It is not clear that Einstein ever forgave him, and I wish I had been old enough to send Podolsky a cross letter myself. Anyone growing up in America in the 1940s knew that the preeminent genius of our age, and perhaps of any other, lived in Princeton, New Jersey, had a predilection for baggy sweaters, and was always badly in need of a haircut—as far ahead of his time in dress and grooming as he was ahead in science during his 1905 annus mirabilis.