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From what I understand, information is communicated instantly between two quantum-entangled particles regardless of the spatial distance between them. However, does this necessarily imply superluminal data transfer? If the "distance" between the particles is simply assumed to be measured in our common 3D euclidean space then that would seem to imply superluminal communication. However, could there be other paths between the two particles that lie beyond our observable 3D euclidean space, other paths that involve additional dimensions in which the particles remain very close or some sort of folding of space on other dimensions that provide an information pathway? Anybody aware of any such research/findings? Thnx.

Oke Uwechue
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No it doesn't. When two parties share an entangled state and each of the parties performs a measurement in her/his state there can exist a perfect correlation between their measurements when both use the same basis. Hence it cannot be used to transmit information because to do that one of them has to communicate (with usual luminical data transfer) which basis has she/he used.

sherlock
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No, I think you are mistaken. Entanglement cannot be used to transmit information. Two distant experimenters each with one of two entangled electrons cannot communicate by performing measurements of their electrons.

Furthermore, entanglement doesn't imply that quantum mechanics is nonlocal, i.e., that there is spooky, instantaneous action at a distance. If you follow the common Copenhagen interpretation of the wavefuction, the wave function has no physical meaning prior to measurement. Nothing passes between the electrons upon measurement. All that changes upon measurement is our state of knowledge.

innisfree
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    What do you mean by "entanglement doesn't imply that quantum mechanics is nonlocal"? Nonlocality is exactly what EPR (together with Bell's inequalities) shows. – André Mar 18 '14 at 17:01
  • Nope, Bell's prohibit local AND real theories/interpretations. Copenhagen interpretation is not a real interpretation of the wave function. It is reality not locality that is rejected. – innisfree Mar 18 '14 at 17:16
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    Ah, true. I usually don't think about it this way, since I strongly believe that the collapse has to be described as a physical process in order to consider quantum theory a fully consistent theory, but you are of course right as far as the conventional Copenhagen interpretation is concerned. – André Mar 18 '14 at 19:13
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Entanglement does not imply any faster than light information transfer. Rather, each system exists in multiple versions and those versions are matched up in the appropriate way when the measurement results from the entangled systems interact. This matching is done using quantum information that each system holds that can't be extracted by measurements on that system alone and so doesn't suffer decoherence. See David Deutsch, Patrick Hayden, 'Information Flow in Entangled Quantum Systems', Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 456(1999):1759-1774. available at http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9906007. And also David Deutsch, 'Vindication of quantum locality', Proc. R. Soc. A 468(2012), 531-544. available at http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.6223.

alanf
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  • -1 This is a link-only answer. Basically it says the answer to the question is No and directs the reader to links to find out the reason. Those reasons ought to be contained in the answer. – sammy gerbil Jul 26 '18 at 15:58