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Bell’s Inequality, Information Transmission, and Prism Models

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Tim Maudlin
Tim Maudlin*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University
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Extract

Suppose we set about creating pairs of photons in the singlet state, allow them to separate to some considerable distance, and then send each photon into a polarizer oriented at some randomly chosen angle. Quantum theory predicts that in the long run we will observe the following behavior. On each wing of the experiment we will see perfectly random behavior. Roughly half of the photons will pass their polarizers and half will be absorbed. There will be no correlation between passage or absorption in one experiment and passage or absorption in the succeeding experiments. There will be no correlation between the passage or absorption and the angle at which the polarizer is set. But when we examine the correlations between the two wings of the experiment, something remarkable emerges.

Type
Part X. Quantum Theory II
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 404 - 417
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank an anonymous referee for very helpful suggestions.

References

Bell, J.S. (1976), “The Theory of Local Beables”, Epistemological Letters: March 1976,11-24, reprinted as chapter 7 of Bell’s 1987 Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
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