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arXiv:quant-ph/9711060

Mermin's Suggestion and the Nature of Bohr's Action-at-a-Distance Influence

Henry Pierce Stapp

Published Nov 25, 1997• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Mermin suggests comparing my recent proof of quantum nonlocality to Bohr's reply to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. Doing so leads naturally to the insight that the nonlocal influence deduced from the analysis of the Hardy experiment is the same as the nonlocal influence deduced by Bohr, and used by him to block the application of the criterion of physical reality proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. However, the greater sophistication of the Hardy experiment, as contrasted to the experiment considered by Bohr and the three authors, exposes more clearly than before the nature of this influence, and thereby strengthens Bohr's position.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/9711060

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Mermin suggests comparing my recent proof of quantum nonlocality to Bohr's reply to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. Doing so leads naturally to the insight that the nonlocal influence deduced from the analysis of the Hardy experiment is the same as the nonlocal influence deduced by Bohr, and used by him to block the application of the criterion of physical reality proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. However, the greater sophistication of the Hardy experiment, as contrasted to the experiment considered by Bohr and the three authors, exposes more clearly than before the nature of this influence, and thereby strengthens Bohr's position.
The article offers a rereading of Bohr’s reply to the argument of A. Einstein, B. Podolsky, and N. Rosen (EPR) concerning the incompleteness, or else nonlocality, of quantum mechanics. Bohr shows EPR’s argument to be deficient on their own terms, by virtue of an ambiguity found in their application of the criterion of reality they propose to the phenomena in question. He also offers an alternative interpretation of the EPR experiment itself, the thought experiment proposed by EPR, as part of his overall interpretation of quantum mechanics as complementarity.
David Mermin's recent paper with the same title as this one makes it clear that his claim to have found a gap in my reasoning rests on his claim that my argument violates a criterion for meaningfulness of counterfactual statements that I myself had set down. I set down no such requirement. But I am willing to accept it as a conservative sufficient condition. This already entails, within my proof, that nature must have a deep structure that extends beyond what actually occurs. It imposes, without appeal to the notion of determinism or hidden variables, constraints connecting, at the macroscopic level, what did occur to what would have occurred if certain quantum choices had gone differently. All the statements in the proof have natural meanings within the context of an examination of that deep structure.
After summarising a previously given analysis of Bohr's reply to Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR), this chapter endorses the claim made by Everett himself that Everettian quantum mechanics `in a certain sense bridges the positions of Einstein and Bohr'. On the one hand, it shows how Everett's theory provides a reconstruction of Bohr's viewpoint of complementarity as applied to the EPR case and a justi�cation of his criticism of EPR's `criterion of reality'. On the other hand, it includes a notion of physical reality that is independent of any observational context, and suggests a remaining shortcoming of Bohr's reply.
According to the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics (Bohr being its leading voice), the attributes of a physical object (position, momentum, spin, etc.) can be assigned only when they have been measured. Einstein advocated the local realist viewpoint that an object had definite attributes whether they had been measured or not. The Copenhagen school view that measurement actually produces an object’s property would imply that the measurement of one part of an entangled quantum state can instantaneously fix the value of another part, no matter how far the two parts have been separated. Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen devised a thought experiment to shine a light on this “spooky action-at-a-distance” feature; its discussion and debate have illuminated the meaning of quantum mechanics (QM). It led later to Bell’s theorem showing that these seemingly philosophical questions can lead to observable results. The experimental vindication of the orthodox theory has sharpened our appreciation of the nonlocal features of quantum mechanics. Nevertheless, the counter-intuitive QM picture of objective reality still troubles many, leaving one to wonder whether quantum mechanics is ultimately a complete theory.
In the 80 years since the seminal Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) paper, physicists and philosophers have mused about the `spooky action at a distance' aspect of quantum mechanics that so bothered Einstein. In his formal analysis of EPR-type entangled quantum states, Bell (1964) concluded that any hidden variable theory designed to reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics must necessarily be nonlocal and allow superluminal interactions. This doesn't immediately imply that nonlocality is a characteristic feature of quantum mechanics let alone a fundamental property of nature; however, many physicists and philosophers of science do harbor this belief. Experts in the field often use the term `nonlocality' to designate particular non-classical aspects of quantum entanglement and do not confuse the term with superluminal interactions. However, many physicists seem to take the term more literally. I endeavor to disabuse the latter of this notion by emphasizing that the correlations of Bell-type entanglement are a result of ordinary quantum superposition with no need to introduce nonlocality. The conclusion of the EPR paper wasn't that quantum mechanics is nonlocal but rather that it is an incomplete description of reality. For different reasons, many physicists, including me, agree with Einstein that quantum mechanics is necessarily an incomplete description of reality.