Two Faced Janus of Quantum Nonlocality
2020 (English)In: Entropy, E-ISSN 1099-4300, Vol. 22, no 3, p. 1-17, article id 303
Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
This paper is a new step towards understanding why "quantum nonlocality" is a misleading concept. Metaphorically speaking, "quantum nonlocality" is Janus faced. One face is an apparent nonlocality of the Luders projection and another face is Bell nonlocality (a wrong conclusion that the violation of Bell type inequalities implies the existence of mysterious instantaneous influences between distant physical systems). According to the Luders projection postulate, a quantum measurement performed on one of the two distant entangled physical systems modifies their compound quantum state instantaneously. Therefore, if the quantum state is considered to be an attribute of the individual physical system and if one assumes that experimental outcomes are produced in a perfectly random way, one quickly arrives at the contradiction. It is a primary source of speculations about a spooky action at a distance. Bell nonlocality as defined above was explained and rejected by several authors; thus, we concentrate in this paper on the apparent nonlocality of the Luders projection. As already pointed out by Einstein, the quantum paradoxes disappear if one adopts the purely statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM). In the statistical interpretation of QM, if probabilities are considered to be objective properties of random experiments we show that the Luders projection corresponds to the passage from joint probabilities describing all set of data to some marginal conditional probabilities describing some particular subsets of data. If one adopts a subjective interpretation of probabilities, such as Qbism, then the Luders projection corresponds to standard Bayesian updating of the probabilities. The latter represents degrees of beliefs of local agents about outcomes of individual measurements which are placed or which will be placed at distant locations. In both approaches, probability-transformation does not happen in the physical space, but only in the information space. Thus, all speculations about spooky interactions or spooky predictions at a distance are simply misleading. Coming back to Bell nonlocality, we recall that in a recent paper we demonstrated, using exclusively the quantum formalism, that CHSH inequalities may be violated for some quantum states only because of the incompatibility of quantum observables and Bohr's complementarity. Finally, we explain that our criticism of quantum nonlocality is in the spirit of Hertz-Boltzmann methodology of scientific theories.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI, 2020. Vol. 22, no 3, p. 1-17, article id 303
Keywords [en]
quantum nonlocality, Bell nonlocality, Einstein-Luders nonlocality, projection postulate, state-transformation, probability conditioning, individual vs, statistical interpretations, quantum vs, classical superpositions, ontic-epistemic, spooky action vs, prediction at a distance
National Category
Physical Sciences Mathematics
Research subject
Natural Science, Physics; Natural Science, Mathematics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-94801DOI: 10.3390/e22030303ISI: 000526524300050Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85082661316OAI: oai:DiVA.org:lnu-94801DiVA, id: diva2:1430787
2020-05-182020-05-182023-03-28Bibliographically approved