From: Jeff Davis (jrd1415@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Aug 07 2003 - 00:35:41 MDT
Extropes,
I've got a question.
You generate two entangled and undisturbed photons,
which head off in different directions toward distant
detectors.
Detector number one is closer than detector number
two. Detector number one will be triggered, or not
triggered--the "wave front" disturbed by a
measurement, or, alternately, not disturbed by letting
the "wave front"/photon pass by
unmeasured/unmolested--before the "wave front"/photon
reaches detector number two.
Okay?
As I understand it, these two photons can be described
as a wave function, and their being "entangled"
presupposes/requires that they are "undisturbed",
which is another way of saying that they have not been
disturbed by any attempt at measurement, which is yet
again equivalent to saying that the wave function
(related to the eigenvector, right?) is "uncollapsed".
Good so far?
So now we have a situation where the wave-particle
duality is fully actualized, no? The two photons can
become determinate particles at the touch of a
measurement. Yet before that happens we are
nevertheless firmly confident--equally certain-- of
'their' reality. We know that we made them(generated
them). That we did so in a manner which has in the
past, with perfect reliability, produced photon pairs
just like this untouched wave/'pair' to which we are,
in this moment(once more, with feeling) directing our
attention. And as before we find ourselves dealing
with that by-now-familiar quantum condition, that
quantum indeterminacy thing, where the photons
exist--their existence not in question, just their
final, definite, measurable, determinate form, no?
And when that final state is provoked by the
inevitable measurement, we will have one photon in one
place and state, and the second in the other place and
complementary state, no?
Okay. If everything is agreeable to this point, then
here's my question:
Can it be determined, at detector number two, whether
the wave function has already--presumably at detector
number one--been "collapsed", whether the photons have
already been "disentangled"?
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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