Quantum Entanglement Explained - How does it really work?
Summary
TLDRThe script delves into the perplexing world of quantum mechanics, focusing on entanglement—a phenomenon where particles become interconnected, affecting each other instantaneously regardless of distance. It clarifies misconceptions, such as Einstein's 'spooky action at a distance,' and highlights entanglement's role in emerging technologies like quantum computing and cryptography. The explanation uses analogies and touches on the EPR paradox and Bell's theorem, showing quantum mechanics' triumph over hidden variables, and hints at entanglement's deeper implications for our understanding of space and nonlocality.
Takeaways
- 🌌 Quantum mechanics involves phenomena like wave-particle duality, superposition, the uncertainty principle, and entanglement, which challenge our everyday understanding of the universe.
- 🔗 Entanglement is often misunderstood as 'spooky action at a distance,' but it is actually a complex quantum correlation between particles that cannot be easily explained by classical physics.
- 🤔 The concept of entanglement was initially thought to imply incompleteness in quantum mechanics, as proposed by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR), who suggested the existence of 'hidden variables'.
- 🧪 The double-slit experiment provides evidence for the superposition principle, showing that particles can behave like waves and be in multiple states until measured.
- 🔬 John Bell's theorem and subsequent experiments, such as those by Clauser and Freedman, demonstrated that quantum mechanics predicts stronger correlations than any local hidden variable theory, supporting the non-locality of quantum mechanics.
- 👥 Entanglement is created when particles interact in a way that their states become linked, resulting in a single wave function that describes both particles, making their properties interdependent.
- 🔄 Entangled particles cannot be considered as separate objects; they are parts of a single system described by a joint wave function, which is why their properties are nonlocal and interdependent.
- 🚀 Quantum entanglement is a foundational aspect of quantum computing, where entangled quantum bits (qubits) can perform calculations much faster than classical computers.
- 🔒 Entanglement is used in quantum cryptography to create secure communication channels, as any attempt to intercept or measure entangled particles would be detectable.
- 🌐 The nonlocality inherent in quantum entanglement challenges our classical understanding of space and suggests that space might emerge from the quantum entanglements that connect objects.
Q & A
What is quantum mechanics?
-Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that describes the behavior of matter and energy at the quantum scale, where classical physics no longer applies. It includes phenomena such as wave-particle duality, superposition, the uncertainty principle, and entanglement.
What is wave-particle duality?
-Wave-particle duality is a concept in quantum mechanics where quantum objects, like electrons, exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties. They can sometimes behave like compact particles and at other times like spread-out waves.
What does superposition mean in quantum mechanics?
-Superposition is a principle in quantum mechanics where a quantum system can exist in multiple states simultaneously until it is measured. For example, a particle can be in a state of being both 'up' and 'down' until an observation is made.
What is the uncertainty principle?
-The uncertainty principle, formulated by Werner Heisenberg, states that it is impossible to simultaneously know both the exact position and momentum of a quantum object. The more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be known.
What is entanglement in quantum mechanics?
-Entanglement is a quantum phenomenon where two or more particles become linked in such a way that the state of one particle is immediately connected to the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them. This connection affects their properties and measurements.
How did Albert Einstein describe entanglement?
-Albert Einstein famously described entanglement as 'spooky action at a distance,' suggesting that the instantaneous effect observed in entangled particles seemed to defy the limitations of space and time.
What is the significance of entanglement in modern technology?
-Entanglement is a key component in emerging technologies such as quantum computing and quantum cryptography. Quantum computers can perform complex calculations much faster than classical computers, and quantum cryptography can provide secure communication channels that are nearly impossible to intercept.
What is the difference between the analogy of gloves and entangled particles?
-While gloves have a predetermined handedness (right or left), entangled particles do not have a predetermined state until measured. The gloves' handedness is known from the start, unlike the spins of entangled particles, which are only determined at the moment of measurement.
What was the EPR paradox and its significance?
-The EPR paradox, named after Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, was a thought experiment that challenged the completeness of quantum mechanics. They suggested that there must be 'hidden variables' that determine the properties of quantum objects, contrary to the indeterminacy implied by quantum mechanics. This led to debates about the nature of reality at the quantum level.
What did John Bell's experiments show about entanglement?
-John Bell's experiments, known as Bell tests, demonstrated that the correlations between entangled particles were stronger than any classical 'hidden variable' theory could explain. This supported the quantum mechanical view that properties of quantum objects are not predetermined but are determined by the act of measurement.
How does entanglement relate to the concept of nonlocality in quantum mechanics?
-Nonlocality in quantum mechanics refers to the phenomenon where the properties of entangled particles are interdependent, regardless of the distance between them. This challenges the classical view of locality, suggesting that quantum objects are not separate but are interconnected through their shared wave function.
Why can't entanglement be used for faster-than-light communication?
-While entangled particles are instantaneously connected, the information about their states cannot be used for faster-than-light communication. This is because the outcome of a measurement on one particle appears random until it is compared with the measurement on the other particle, which requires conventional communication methods.
What is the role of entanglement in quantum computing?
-Entanglement is crucial in quantum computing as it allows quantum bits (qubits) to be in multiple states simultaneously, enabling quantum computers to perform many calculations at once. This parallelism gives quantum computers their potential for vastly superior computational power compared to classical computers.
Outlines
🌌 Quantum Mechanics and Entanglement
This paragraph delves into the peculiarities of quantum mechanics, highlighting phenomena such as wave-particle duality, superposition, and the uncertainty principle. The focus, however, is on entanglement, which Einstein famously dubbed 'spooky action at a distance.' The explanation clarifies that entanglement is not about instantaneous action but rather a complex correlation between entangled particles. The analogy of a married couple, Alice and Bob, is used to illustrate how changes in one affect the other, but the quantum version is more profound due to the inherent properties of particles like electrons and their spins. The concept of superposition is introduced, where a particle's state is not determined until measured, challenging our classical understanding of reality.
🔬 The EPR Paradox and Bell's Theorem
The second paragraph explores the EPR paradox, a thought experiment devised by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen to challenge the completeness of quantum mechanics. They suggested that the instantaneous effects observed in entangled particles implied 'spooky action at a distance,' contradicting the speed limit set by relativity. This led to the proposal of hidden variables that would predetermine particle properties. However, Niels Bohr argued against this, asserting that quantum mechanics was complete as it was. The debate was eventually settled by John Bell, who formulated inequalities that could test the presence of hidden variables. Experiments by Clauser and Freedman confirmed that quantum mechanics was correct, and no hidden variables existed, thus validating the non-local nature of entanglement.
🌐 Entanglement and Nonlocality
This paragraph further explains the concept of entanglement, emphasizing that entangled particles are not separate but parts of a single entity described by a unified wave function. This nonlocality implies that the properties of entangled particles are interdependent, regardless of the distance between them. The traditional understanding of space and locality is challenged, suggesting that quantum entanglement might be more fundamental than space itself. The paragraph also addresses the misconception of using entanglement for faster-than-light communication, clarifying that while the effects of measurements are instantaneous, the information about these measurements still needs to be transmitted conventionally, thus not violating the speed of light limit.
💡 Applications of Quantum Entanglement
The final paragraph discusses the practical applications of quantum entanglement, particularly in the realms of quantum computing and secure communication. It mentions that entangled photons can be used to create tamper-proof encryption for sensitive data, leveraging the inherent properties of entanglement to ensure security. Quantum computers are highlighted as powerful tools capable of performing complex calculations much faster than traditional supercomputers. The paragraph also promotes a course on quantum computing, encouraging viewers to explore this field further and offering a discount for early subscribers, thus providing a practical avenue for those interested in delving deeper into quantum mechanics.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Quantum mechanics
💡Wave-particle duality
💡Superposition
💡Uncertainty principle
💡Entanglement
💡Spooky action at a distance
💡Quantum computers
💡Quantum cryptography
💡EPR paradox
💡Bell's inequality
💡Nonlocality
Highlights
Quantum mechanics involves phenomena like wave-particle duality, superposition, the uncertainty principle, and entanglement which challenge classical thinking.
Entanglement is incorrectly described as 'spooky action at a distance', but it's actually a difficult-to-describe phenomenon that is central to quantum mechanics.
Entanglement is crucial for emerging technologies like quantum computers and quantum cryptography.
Entangled particles, like electrons with opposite spins, exhibit correlations that are not predetermined but determined at the moment of measurement.
The double-slit experiment provides evidence for the superposition principle, showing particles act like waves until measured.
Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) proposed an experiment to show quantum mechanics might be incomplete, suggesting 'hidden variables' could determine particle properties.
Niels Bohr disagreed with EPR, arguing that quantum mechanics is complete and entanglement's strange correlations are an accepted reality.
John Bell developed inequalities to test for the existence of hidden variables, which were later实验ally confirmed to support Bohr's view over EPR's.
Entanglement occurs when particles are created together or interact, resulting in a joint superposition that links their properties.
Entangled particles are not separate but parts of a single object described by a unified wave function, leading to their interdependent properties.
Quantum nonlocality implies an instantaneous connection between entangled particles regardless of distance, challenging our concept of space.
Entanglement cannot be used for faster-than-light communication as the correlation between particles requires classical communication to be meaningful.
Quantum entanglement enables uncrackable data encryption through quantum cryptography, ensuring secure communication.
Quantum computers utilize entanglement to perform complex calculations much faster than traditional computers, promising significant advancements in various fields.
The course on Brilliant about quantum computing provides an interactive learning experience covering fundamentals to advanced quantum algorithm creation.
A special offer for Arvin Ash viewers on Brilliant provides a 20% discount, encouraging viewers to explore quantum computing.
Transcripts
Quantum mechanics sometimes looks like an assorted mix of weird stuff. There’s wave-particle duality,
where quantum objects sometimes look like little compact particles and sometimes like
spread-out waves. There’s superposition, where the objects seem to be two things at once.
There’s the uncertainty principle, which says the universe seems to conspire to stop us from knowing
every detail of a quantum object. And then there’s entanglement.
Albert Einstein famously described this as “spooky action at a distance,” where
doing something to one of a pair of entangled particles seems to instantly affect the properties
of the other, no matter how far away it is. Now, the truth is that none of these descriptions
of quantum phenomena is quite right. They’re all really just efforts to use our everyday language
to talk about things that can’t quite be described by it. That’s especially true of entanglement,
which is not spooky action at a distance, at all. It’s something that is difficult
to describe with our everyday intuitions. But its worth trying to understand it because
as Erwin Schrodinger said, it is, “…the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics
that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought”
In addition, entanglement is the key ingredient of the newfangled technologies we keep hearing
more and more about: super-powerful quantum computers and uncrackable data
encoding using quantum cryptography. It’s about to become very real for everyone.
So what the heck is entanglement? I think that with a few illustrations and animations,
we may yet be able to understand it a little bit better. And that’s coming up right now…
Entanglement sounds sort of like entangled pairs of people. If Alice and Bob get married – they
literally become entangled by tying the knot. Suppose then that Bob tragically
dies. Alice goes from being a wife to a widow. What happens to Bob changes Alice’s status too.
But what entanglement means for quantum particles is a lot stranger than this. Here’s why:
Imagine the particles are electrons, which have a quantum property called spin that makes them
act like little magnets. If we measure this spin for an electron, we’ll always find it pointing
in just one direction or the opposite: up or down, say. Now, we can imagine entangling two
electrons so that their spins are always pointing in opposite directions. If electron 1 has spin up,
electron 2 must have spin down, and vice versa. The two spins are said to be correlated.
They are like a pair of gloves – if one is right-handed, the other must be left-handed.
So now let’s say we entangle the two electrons in this way, and fire them in opposite directions.
We don’t know which of the pair is up and which one is down until we make a measurement.
If we find that electron 1 is spin up. We know the spin of electron 2 must be down.
This is not remarkable because we could do the same thing with the gloves.
We could put one in a package and send it to Alice, and the other to Bob. The moment Alice
opens her package and finds the right-hand glove, she knows Bob must have the left-hand glove.
The handedness of the gloves, like the spins of the electrons, is correlated.
But there is a crucial difference in this analogy. The handedness of the gloves in the package
was the same from the start. It never changed. It was always the right-hand glove that got sent
to Alice. If someone had intercepted the parcel before Alice got it, that person would have seen
that it was the right handed glove. With entangled particles
that’s not the case. Remember, all we did at the outset was ensure that the entanglement
made them correlated so that their spins point in opposite directions. We didn’t specify whether the
spin-up electron is number 1 or number 2. You might think, well OK, but it’s obviously one
or the other – it’s just that we didn’t know which was which until we measured one of them.
Well, that’s not quite so. Say we set up an electron
so that it could have either spin up or spin down when we measure it. That’s called a superposition.
Then, the electron’s spin orientation simply isn’t determined until the measurement is made.
It’s not just that we don’t know it yet – there is no definite answer one way or the other.
How do we know superposition is real and not just an illusion due to our ignorance? Well, one
experimental clue comes from the double slit experiment. This experiment shows
that a particle is indeed spread out like a wave that can be in many locations,
prior to measurement. But after measurement, the particle becomes distinct and localized.
This phenomenon is weird enough just for a single particle. But with entangled particles
it’s even weirder, because it then seems that a measurement on one particle determines the
outcome not just for that particle, but for both of them. When we only measured electron 1,
the measurement not only forced the universe to choose between spin up and spin down for that
particle – it also forced the opposite choice for electron 2, because of their correlation.
Albert Einstein thought up an experiment like this in 1935, in collaboration with two younger
scientists, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. They are referred to as EPR for short by combining the
first letters of their last names. They didn’t do it to show how weird quantum mechanics is.
They did it to show that quantum mechanics could be incomplete.
In this experiment it looks as though, by making a measurement on particle 1, we’re
triggering some effect that influences the spin of particle 2. And according to quantum mechanics,
this happens instantaneously: it takes no time for the effect to be felt by the other particle.
But that’s impossible because Einstein’s theory of special relativity, devised 20
years earlier, said that no influence can be transmitted faster than the speed of light.
It was as if, as Einstein said, there was some
impossible spooky action at a distance that passed instantly between particle 1 and particle 2.
Because of this, EPR reasoned that the whole idea of properties of quantum objects
remaining undetermined until one measures them, didn’t make sense. They figured that there must be
something – what Einstein called hidden variables – that fixes the orientations
of the spins all along. And that we couldn't actually measure these variables to find out the
orientations of the spins. That’s why they are hidden. But they must exist, according to EPR.
So the phenomenon they had discovered, which became known as entanglement,
seemed to blow a hole in the logic of quantum mechanics. But others, like Danish physicist
Niels Bohr, said that Einstein was just wrong. Bohr said there were no hidden variables,
and the fact that entanglement seemed to create these weird correlations between particles was
just something we had to accept as reality. There was no obvious way to tell who was right.
Scientists remained divided. It was no good just doing the experiment that EPR had proposed
because simply measuring the spins wouldn't tell you if those spins had been fixed all along,
like EPR thought, or whether they snapped into place after measurement, as Bohr thought.
It wasn’t until almost 30 years later, in 1964, that Irish physicist John Bell figured out how to
set up a clever experiment to determine who was right. It involved running the experiment again
and again on pairs of entangled particles while the experimenters themselves – Alice
and Bob – change exactly how they made those measurement each time. Then you look at how
strong the correlation is between the outcomes of measurement as those changes are being made.
Bell proved that quantum mechanics predicted stronger statistical correlations in the
outcomes of these measurements than any hidden variable theory possibly could.
I made a video about how Bell’s inequality works if you want to learn more about this.
Suffice it to say that when Bell’s experiment was first done in a lab in the 1970s by
physicists John Clauser and Stuart Freedman at the University of California Berkeley,
it showed that there was no sign of hidden variables, and that indeed, outcomes are
determined only by the act of measurement itself. And in the ensuing years, this aspect of quantum
mechanics has proven to be correct over and over again. Bohr was right, and EPR were wrong.
Now you might be thinking how exactly do you entangle two quantum objects to begin with?
The simplest way to make these is to entangle them from birth – like twins you could say.
Typically, researchers make the pair of photons in a single quantum jump,
for example when an atom that has been given some extra energy sheds it by emitting two photons at
once. There are clever ways of doing this with lasers, which is how Freedman and Clauser did it.
But there are other ways of creating entanglement, between objects like atoms or electrons. The
simplest way is to simply bring the particles together and let them interact. If you arrange for one
particle to affect the final state of a second particle, then, when you put the first particle
in a quantum superposition, the pair of particles can end up in a joint superposition – an entangled
pair. That’s really what entanglement is: a quantum superposition of more than one object.
So do Bell tests mean that Einstein’s spooky action at a distance is real?
You might hear that claim, but it's not right. EPR were thinking about entanglement the wrong way.
That’s not surprising, because what they were assuming was just common sense – so much so that
they didn’t even realize it was an assumption. They were thinking of the two particles as
separate objects. And why wouldn’t they? After all, they are sent flying in opposite directions
in space. And in principle you can wait until they are many light years apart before measuring them.
But once objects are entangled, they’re not separate. They are, in a sense,
two parts of a single object. Here’s what that means. In quantum mechanics,
objects are described by wave functions: mathematical expressions that encapsulate
all that can be said about the object. This wave function can be spread out in space. This
is why particles can act as if they are waves. Yet if we entangle two particles, they are then
described by a single wave function. And since two entangled objects are being
described by the same wave function, they are mathematically speaking the same object.
That’s really what entanglement means, and it’s why the particles’ properties
are then interdependent. If you do something to one of the particles, such as measure it,
you change the wave function and so you alter the other particle too, since it
is also described by the same wave function. Now, the question you might ask is: How can two
initially separate particles, by interacting, somehow combine their two wave functions into one?
It really comes down to the math. Before the particles interact, we can separate
the wave function of the whole system of both particles into a part that describes particle 1
and a part that describes particle 2. But after they’ve interacted, that’s no longer true.
We can’t point to any part of the total wave function and say, that bit is particle 1,
and the other bit is particle 2. This mixing up happens for almost any kind of interaction between them.
So once two particles are entangled, we can’t say anything about one of them without considering
the whole wave function. It’s as if their properties are now spread out over both.
This is why it doesn’t matter how far apart entangled particles are located – they’re still
interwoven by their joint wave function.
That’s the really strange thing. We are used to the properties of an object being in
or on that object. If my t-shirt is blue, the blueness is on the tshirt – it’s localized there.
If I have a coffee mug that’s blue, that’s the coffee mug’s blueness,
not the tshirt’s. But for entangled quantum objects, their properties can be nonlocal – spread
between both objects. Some of the tshirt’s blueness can be in the coffee mug's, and vice versa.
This brings us to why entanglement is at the heart of quantum mechanics, because
what it tells us is that the quantum world has a feature called nonlocality.
Things at one place don’t depend just on what happens in the neighborhood of that place,
as they do in the classical world. There seems to be an instantaneous connection between
different regions and particles, regardless of how far apart they are.
Why isn’t this “spooky action at a distance” then? That’s because Einstein’s picture
was of something at one place somehow transmitting its effect to another place – faster than light.
But quantum nonlocality is an alternative to that picture. What it really says is that we
can’t think of those two places as being distinct: quantum mechanics collapses them into a single
thing. In this sense, quantum mechanics seems to make nonsense of our normal sense of space.
In fact, some researchers suspect that quantum entanglement is more fundamental than space
itself, and that our notion of space actually emerges from the quantum entanglements that
connect objects in a vast web of interaction. What about using quantum entanglement for
communication? It’s tempting to imagine that entanglement will let us communicate faster
than light. Let’s say we make a pair of entangled particles and separate them by thousands of miles,
so that Alice has particle 1 in China, and Bob has particle 2 the US. If Bob takes a measurement
in the US, doesn’t that mean Alice’s particle in China is instantly affected? Well, yes it
seems so. But when Alice measures her particle it will seem like a random collapse to her. There’s
nothing meaningful about a measurement Alice makes until she finds out how much it correlates with
what Bob measured. And the only way to do that is by exchanging information about their measurements,
by sending an ordinary message. Email, snail mail, carrier pigeon – however they choose to do it.
They’ll never do it faster than light. This is why it’s impossible
to use the correlation between entangled particles to send any information instantaneously.
Now, there is at least one advantage to using entangled particles to send messages:
you can encrypt the message in a way that it can never be intercepted and decrypted
without that decryption being detected.
And they’ll know their message wasn’t secure.
That’s why quantum-entangled photons sent along optical fibers or by satellite signals are now
being used to encrypt sensitive messages, such as financial data, in a tamper-proof quantum
internet that’s still under construction. Entanglement is also the key to quantum
computing. Quantum computers with just a few dozen entangled quantum bits
have been shown to do calculations in seconds that would take conventional
supercomputers centuries. It’s probably going to play a big role in all our lives.
If you want to learn more about this fascinating world of quantum computing,
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