Skip navigation
Spooky Quantum Action Passes Test
Article

Spooky Quantum Action Passes Test

Recent experiments quash the hope that the unsettling phenomenon of quantum entanglement can be explained away

Scientific American, 2018 more...

Read offline


Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Scientific
  • Eye Opening

Recommendation

Quantum theory is at once one of the most reliably tested and counterintuitive elements of physics. While photovoltaic cells light prople’s homes, and pictures of black holes lit by Hawking radiation populate news feeds, people still struggle to make intuitive sense of quantum phenomena. In an absorbing and accessible paper, Ronald Hanson and Krister Shalm outline the experiments that have demonstrated the validity of quantum entanglement and how it will form the basis of many new communication and measurement technologies.

Summary

Quantum entanglement is one of the strangest phenomena that has challenged physicists.

In the early days of the theory of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger, Albert Einstein and others struggled with one idea in particular: quantum entanglement. The physical properties of two entangled particles can be collectively known, even though individual properties are unknown. As they are correlated, it’s sufficient to measure the property in only one particle to know its value in the entangled partner. A conflict arises when more than one of the physical properties of the entangled partners are considered. According to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, it is impossible to know precisely several physical properties of...

About the Authors

Ronald Hanson is a physicist at Delft University of Technology and scientific director of its QuTech research center, a collaboration with the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), focused on quantum computing and quantum Internet technology. Krister Shalm is a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder, where he develops tools to test foundational issues in quantum mechanics.


More on this topic