Does the following experiment disprove the Copenhagen interpretation?

Question

I have a question concerning the scientific experiment proposed in the following video, (25:00-29:00) titled the "EPR Thought Experiment", which bears resemblance to the quantum eraser experiment.

The Quantum Conspiracy: What Popularizers of QM Don't Want You to Know. Ron Garret, Google Tech Talks (YouTube), 12 January 2011.

I had an email exchange about a year ago with Ron Garret, in the exchange he said the following:

Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about what Copenhagen actually say, because there’s considerable disagreement. I think most people think of the Copenhagen interpretation as the idea that measurement causes a physical phenomenon known as “collapse of the wave function” which is non-linear and irreversible, i.e. it causes a quantum superposition to change into a probabilistic mixture of classical states, and that there is an physical difference between these two states. That idea can definitely be ruled out experimentally in any number of ways, the EPRG thought experiment from my talk being, of course, my favorite example.

My issue here is it seems as though if his experiment were to be performed, it would violate known laws of physics. As photons entangled with different states of the other particles wouldn't interfere any longer, am I misunderstanding something?

Is this experiment physically plausible in accordance with the known laws of physics?

Does this refute the Copenhagen interpretation and/or quantum indeterminacy?

Answer 1

Garret's presentation of what he calls the "Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Garret" paradox, in the 25:00 - 29:00 range of the video you link to, is not sound.

Garret proposes a source of entangled particles which produces the state $$ \newcommand{\up}{|\!\uparrow⟩}\newcommand{\down}{|\!\downarrow⟩} |\Psi⟩=\frac{\up\down+\down\up}{\sqrt{2}} $$ and then sends the particles to distant locations, to be measured at spatially-separated events. His protocol then asks you to 'measure on the left, and look for interference on the right', which can be succinctly phrased as measuring on the $\{\up,\down\}$ basis on the first mode, and on the $$ \newcommand{\plus}{|+⟩}\newcommand{\minus}{|-⟩} \left\{\plus=\frac{\up+\down}{\sqrt{2}},\minus=\frac{\up-\down}{\sqrt{2}}\right\} $$ basis on the second mode. The measurement probabilities in this case are easily seen to be $$ \newcommand{\bup}{⟨\uparrow\!|}\newcommand{\bdown}{⟨\downarrow\!|} \newcommand{\bplus}{⟨+|}\newcommand{\bminus}{⟨-|}\newcommand{\bpm}{⟨\pm|} \left|\bup\bpm|\Psi⟩\right|^2\frac12, $$ and analogously for $\bdown$, so if you measure on the left there is no interference on the right.

Garret then claims that this can be used for superluminal communication, and this is where he is incorrect.

So far, there's nothing that Alice, who is in control of the first mode, can do to alter the outcome at all - she definitely cannot control which of the two outputs ($\up$ or $\down$) she will get. The only choice she has is whether to measure her system prior to the interference step, or to let the two arms interfere and then measure. What Garret apparently doesn't realize is that even if Alice does let her system produce interference, the other system will not produce interference either. Alice has no way to make Bob's side of the system display interference without sending him classical information at subluminal speeds.

Let me sketch that calculation as it is important to the argument. Suppose both Alice and Bob measure on the $|\pm⟩$ basis, with Alice obtaining $|a⟩=|\pm⟩$ and Bob obtaining $|b⟩=|\pm⟩$. The probability for this outcome is then \begin{align} |⟨a|⟨b|\Psi⟩|^2 &=\frac18\left|(\bup+a\bdown)(\bup+b\bdown)(\up\down+\down\up\right|^2 \\&= \frac18\left|a+b\right|^2. \end{align} Thus if Alice gets $\plus$ it is certain that Bob will get $\plus$, and ditto for $\minus$, so it seems that Bob does observe interference. However, just because Alice decides that she wants to run her system through the 'recombine' step that doesn't mean that she gets to control which outcome she gets. She will get $\plus$ as often as she does $\down$, which means that so will Bob, and what that looks like to Bob is simply no interference.

Alice's actions, then, have no effect on what Bob observes, and therefore this channel cannot be used for superluminal communication.

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This does sort of have a bearing on the Copenhagen Interpretation as described by Garret,

most people think of the Copenhagen interpretation as the idea that measurement causes a physical phenomenon known as “collapse of the wave function” which is non-linear and irreversible, i.e. it causes a quantum superposition to change into a probabilistic mixture of classical states, and that there is an physical difference between these two states.

but it doesn't rule CI out. In particular, this understanding of the Copenhagen Interpretation does force Bob's system to change instantaneously as soon as Alice measures her side of their entangled pair, but Bob's system somehow contrives to (partially) "hide" this inner change of state from any possible measurement, in a way which exactly prohibits superluminal communication.

This bothers some people (it somehow imagines Nature as having an extra set of supernatural powers which it purposefully denies us) but it is not inconsistent with the laws of physics. In particular, this "EPRG" argument does not rule out the Copenhagen Interpretation as "scientifically untenable", as Garret appears to claim.

I'm afraid I won't have time to critique whatever it is he says in the second half of the video, though. Quantum interpretations are a tricky business, and if you make technical mistakes on the underlying mechanics then there's no telling how much of a basis the resulting arguments will have.

Answer 2

My issue here is it seems as though if his experiment were to be performed, it would violate known laws of physics.

The picture and words in the section of the video you cited seem a little too vague to uniquely specify a specific experiment. But in the whole first 40 minutes of the video you see that all he is claiming is that we don't see departures from the Schrödinger equation, which is correct. And the opposite (seeing departures from Schrödinger) would be violating the known laws of physics. The Schrödinger equation is the law of physics, the Born rule is an attempt to use the wavefunction of one system to describe the state of a device that measures the aggregate statistics of an ensemble of identically prepared subsystems. When you write the Schrödinger equation for D+S1+S2+...+Sk where D is the device that measures the aggregate statistics of a whole ensemble and S1+S2+...+Sk is the whole ensemble itself and all the things it interacts with too, then you do get the Born rule. It is a hack only in that you focus on just one of the many identically prepared systems. It isn't a hack in the sense that the results are wrong.

The whole first 2/3 of the video is just saying that a measurement is a process by which the state of the device becomes entangled with the newly created eigenstate of the observable. And it is created in the sense of being entangled with the newly created branch of the entanglement of the devices and the objects. This isn't a radical departure from quantum mechanics, it is only a modification of some oversimplifications of some, rather old fashioned, descriptions.

As photons entangled with different states of the other particles wouldn't interfere any longer, am I misunderstanding something?

The whole video is saying there are proto measurements, and that entanglement is just another example of a protomeasurement. A protomeasurement is upgraded to a full irreversible measurement solely when the different states become entangled with too many other things to be reversible in a purposeful way or even on accident. It's the thermodynamic kind of irreversibility.

The entanglement of two things is just a protomeasurement, then the entanglement gets passed to more and more things until eventually you have an entanglement between two different collections that are so numerous and complicated that reversing it just isn't going to happen. At that point, the entanglement is effectively irreversible and you can call it (each of the branches of the entanglement) a measurement result.

The whole video is just saying that measurements are just an outcome of entanglements.

Answer 3

Everyone criticizing my work here has completely missed the point: the EPRG paradox is intended to be a straw man. Of course it doesn't actually work. The whole point of the talk is to explain why it doesn't work, because on the traditional pedagogy of quantum mechanics it seems like it should work. If you're going to criticize someone's work, you really ought to read it first. Particularly section 4 of the paper.

Answer 4

I'm very late to this discussion. (I'll claim a delayed choice as the information took 4 years to make it to me even at subluminal speeds.)

To answer the original question, the answer is no. But then the video it comes from also says the answer is no, as does Ron Garret himself in this discussion. (I'm not sure what Emilio is talking about, given that the video itself does knock down the strawman and shows why the approach doesn't work, so it does stand on its own. To be fair, at the point in the video it is presented, Ron states it as if it is true, which is the strawman, but then later describes why what he said at that point isn't true. Now he doesn't specifically say that it re-validates Copenhagen as a possible interpretation, but that "invalidation" of CI came from the strawman so when Ron knocks down his own strawman he effectively knocks down the invidation of CI. But, then also talks at the end about potentially viable interpretations as his "zero world", and the many worlds, and doesn't seem to note that CI is still formally viable. At best he's ambiguous about whether he's suggesting it is viable or not, but the video taken as a whole with the math seems to accept that CI is viable. You just have to be careful to note which statements said earlier are tentative based on the strawman vs those left standing once the strawman falls.

But, I have an expansion of the question based on the answers here, using the famous "delayed choice quantum eraser" experiment. While I assume most people here know it, or can look it up (e.g., Wikipedia on that exact phrase), I'll summarize what I understand:

Particles pass through standard double slit then go into a beta barium borate crystal, creating the entangled pair, which are further diverged via a Glan–Thompson prism. One pair of paths go "up" to detector D0 (let's say in Alice's lab), and the one pair of paths go down to the delayed choice mechanism (let's say in Bob's lab).

The two paths going to Alice's lab are combined such that no "which way" slit information survives at detector D0.

The two paths going to Bob's lab come in contact with beamsplitters BSa (path for slit A) and BSb (path for slit B), each which allows a 50% chance of the photon passing through or being reflected. If reflected, path A ends at detector D3. If triggered, we know the photon went through slit A. If a photon is reflected at BSb (path B), path B ends at detector D4, and we know the photo went through slit B.

If a photon of either path A or B passes through the beamsplitter (BSa or BSb), it continues on a path with mirrors Ma and Mb, respectively, followed by beamsplitter BSc where path A goes through from one side and path B goes through from the other side and both have a 50% chance of the photon passing through or reflecting, ending up at either detectors D1 or D2. That is, D1 detections could equally come from path A reflecting from BSc or from path B passing through BSc. Similarly D2 detections could be path A passing through BSc or path B reflecting off BSc. Hence D1 and D2 have no "which way" path information.

The result of the experiment notes that, when photons are detected at D3 and D4, where path information is known (D3 = slit A, D4 = slit B), the corresponding collection of detections of the entangle photons at D0 form a normal random distribution with no interference pattern, R03 and R04. When photons are detected at D1 and D2, where path information is not known, the corresponding collection of detections of the entagled photons at D0 form interference patterns, R01 and R02, where the patterns of R01 and R02 are 180 degrees out of phase. I believe R01 + R02 combines the patterns to look like a normal distribution.

My question then, which I'll propose the answer below, is why you can't use this for FTL comms.

Here are the steps I'd imagine. Move Ron's lab even further away, say 1 lightyear, to make the FTL case clear.

Now, replace BSa and BSb with 100% reflective mirrors but are movable in and out of paths A and B, respectively. When Ron puts them in the path, all photons go to D3 and D4, so Alice gets patterns R03 and R04 on her detector. When Ron takes the mirrors out of the path, all photons go to D1 and D2, so Alice gets patterns R01 and R02 on her detector.

So, in principle, Ron could modulate the positions of the mirrors such that in-path = 1 and out-of-path = 0, and Alice could read patterns R03 and R04, which are identical normal curves, as a 1, and patterns R01 and R02, which are interference patterns, as 0, and hence Bob can send a signal at any point that Alice can read based on the patterns on her D0 detector.

Why this can't work, from Ron's video and the answers above, I think, is because all Alice sees is a normal distribution on her detector all the time, either R03 + R04, which is a normal distribution, or R01 + R02 which is an identical normal distribution. R01 and R02 are separate interference patterns, but the only way to separate them on Alice's detector is to know which individual detections hit D1 or D2 in Bob's lab. And, the only way to know that is to send the D1 or D2 detection notification from Bob's lab to Alice's lab using conventional subluminal speeds. (This is the "coincidence counter" in the actual experiment which matches up D0 detections with D1, D2, D3, and D4.)

If I follow Ron's video, e.g., the slide at ~41:41, and the answers here that seem to reinforce the same thing, the combined interference patterns are what removes the ability to separate the signals to create FTL communications.

Is that correct, or have I misinterpreted the reason you can't do this?