rhamphotheca:

“Spooky Action At a Distance” in Particle Physics

provided by Springer

Researchers have devised a proposal for the first conclusive experimental test of a phenomenon known as ‘Bell’s nonlocality.’ This test is designed to reveal correlations that are stronger than any classical correlations, and do so between high-energy particles that do not consist of ordinary matter and light. These results are relevant to the so-called ‘CP violation’ principle, which is used to explain the dominance of matter over antimatter.

These findings by Beatrix Hiesmayr, a theoretical physicist at the University of Vienna, and her colleagues, a team of quantum information theory specialists, particle physicists and nuclear physicists, have been published in European Physical Journal C.

According to the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Gedanken-Experiment, two particles that are measured independently obey the principle of locality, implying that an external influence on the first particle, such as measurement, has no direct influence on the second – in other words there is no “spooky action at distance,” as Einstein would have described it. In an experimental setup, however, measurement results for one particle revealed a correlated measurement result for the other particle. Initially, these correlations could only be explained by referring to hidden parameters. In 1964, John Bell found that so-called local realistic hidden parameter theories imply that the relations between these correlations could be experimentally tested through so-called Bell tests. Since then many experiments have proven that local, realistic hidden parameters cannot be used as an explanation for these correlations…

(read more: PhysOrg)     (image: Prof. S. Popescu, Univ. of Bristol)

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 More information: Hiesmayr B. C., Di Domenico A., Curceanu C., Gabriel A., Huber M., Larsson J.-Å., Moskal P. (2011). Revealing Bell’s Nonlocality for Unstable Systems in High Energy Physics, European Physical Journal C(EPJ C) 72: 1856 DOI: 10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-1856-X