Can EPR non-locality be geometrical?
- Tel-Aviv Univ. (Israel). Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences
- Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States)
The presence in Quantum Mechanics of non-local correlations is one of the two fundamentally non-intuitive features of that theory. The non-local correlations themselves fall into two classes: EPR and Geometrical. The non-local characteristics of the geometrical type are well-understood and are not suspected of possibly generating acausal features, such as faster-than-light propagation of information. This has especially become true since the emergence of a geometrical treatment for the relevant gauge theories, i.e. Fiber Bundle geometry, in which the quantum non-localities are seen to correspond to pure homotopy considerations. This aspect is reviewed in section 2. Contrary-wise, from its very conception, the EPR situation was felt to be paradoxical. It has been suggested that the non-local features of EPR might also derive from geometrical considerations, like all other non-local characteristics of QM. In[7], one of the authors was able to point out several plausibility arguments for this thesis, emphasizing in particular similarities between the non-local correlations provided by any gauge field theory and those required by the preservation of the quantum numbers of the original EPR state-vector, throughout its spatially-extended mode. The derivation was, however, somewhat incomplete, especially because of the apparent difference between, on the one hand, the closed spatial loops arising in the analysis of the geometrical non-localities, from Aharonov-Bohm and Berry phases to magnetic monopoles and instantons, and on the other hand, in the EPR case, the open line drawn by the positions of the two moving decay products of the disintegrating particle. In what follows, the authors endeavor to remove this obstacle and show that as in all other QM non-localities, EPR is somehow related to closed loops, almost involving homotopy considerations. They develop this view in section 3.
- Research Organization:
- Texas Univ., Austin, TX (United States). Dept. of Physics
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FG03-93ER40757
- OSTI ID:
- 113979
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/ER/40757-003; CPP-93-03; ON: DE96000408; TRN: 95:023177
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: [1995]
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Similar Records
The Aharonov-Bohm effect and the non-locality debate
Quantum statistics and spacetime topology: Quantum surgery formulas