Classical Spheres, Division Algebras, and the Illusion of Quantum Non-locality:

My current essay analyzes Anton Zeilinger's logic and concludes that his logic fails if the state of one or more of the entangled particles changes en route from the source to the detector. Others seem to believe that there is no physical reason for the photon to change.

I de-emphasized this argument after becoming aware of Joy Christian's work implying Bell's calculations are in error, but, assuming Joy is wrong (which I do not) my argument still applies.

Yesterday I received Phys Rev Lett 106, 080404 (25 Feb 2011) Antonelli, Shtaif, and Brodsky's paper titled "Sudden Death of Entanglement Induced by Polarization Mode Dispersion" in which they note that the relation between the violation of non-locality and the sudden disappearance of entanglement are due to CHANGES OCCURRING EN ROUTE! The changes are due to the optical birefringence associated with the optical fibers over which the photons travel. They claim that understanding this relation to non-locality is of utmost importance and say "the arbitrary birefringence characterizing fiber-optic transmission produces a PREVIOUSLY UNOBSERVED combination of physical effects" [my emphasis].

They conclude that "The ultimate limits imposed by fiber birefringence to applications based on non-local properties of polarization entanglement were shown to be intriguingly related with the phenomenon of entanglement sudden death."

Without vouching for their calculations, I would point out that the concept of "change en route" as an argument against Zeilinger's (and others') logic is exactly what I proposed in my essay.

I still believe that Joy's work is correct, but I am pointing out here that there are other valid reasons to question non-locality.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

A brief addendum to my note above: I have constructed a new counterexample to Bell's theorem that may be of interest. It can be found here.

Joy Christian

This comment was posted on Florin's "Clothes for the Standard Model Beggar":

John Merryman-- as you know, the Galilean transformation is perfectly correct mathematics, in which any two velocities can be added to produce the resultant velocity. What is missing is the physical concept of a 'maximum velocity', the speed of light. In similar fashion, it is not today's math that is incorrect, but the underlying physical concepts are incorrect.

For example, Florin begins with the statement that "the geometric-algebraic duality is at the core of understanding quantum mechanics, the Standard Model, and even this years FQXi essay question." I do not believe this to be true. As stated in my essay, "Steiglitz has shown the equivalence of time-invariant realizable analog filters and digital filters, so the theory of processing analog signals and the theory of processing digital signals are equivalent. Thus analog or digital reality questions can't be answered mathematically-- the answer must be found in a physical universe." Unless I have missed something above, Florin does not deal with physical reality, focusing only on math. This seems to lead to very dogmatic statements about physics.

Duality is a tricky subject. One might even claim that the entire purpose of Zen Buddhism is to get beyond dualism, which, as Florin implies, may have its root in left-right brain structure.

The source of dualism in physics is not Connes geometry-algebra, but Bohr's "complementarity principle" which is the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation, and refers to effects such as wave/particle duality, the root problem of quantum mechanics. Einstein claimed that "In a complete theory there is an element corresponding to each element of reality." But the deBroglie-Bohm theory of physics posits a 'particle plus pilot wave', which is TWO elements of reality, while quantum mechanics offers only ONE element of reality, the 'wave function' which corresponds only to the 'pilot wave'. The wave-function does NOT correspond to the particle. Instead a 'superposition' of wave functions uses Fourier mathematics to 'construct' a particle, but as John Bell points out, the problem is that this wave-packet 'disperses', and only the extremely ugly GRW 'stochastic collapse' currently 'solves' this problem [a true 'patch' in John's sense of the word].

Einstein reminded us that "Maxwell's equations are laws representing the *structure* of the field." In this sense Maxwell's generalization of these laws to include gravito-magnetism enlarges the set of possible field structures. These field equations can, in a Yang-Mills, Calabi-Yau-compatible sense, incorporate stable particles, something that superposition of linear fields can never manage to do. Maxwell's gravito-magnetic C-field based upon electromagnetic equations plus symmetry, and General Relativity's production of the same equations in the 'weak field approximation' has not been sufficiently appreciated. Only recently has Ronald Adler examined "Gravito-magnetism in Quantum Mechanics". Other than this first attempt, QM does not take the C-field into account.

Therefore, if, as John Bell preferred, reality is best described by Bohm's 'particle plus wave' rather than as Bohr's 'particle/wave', then the quantum mechanics wave function corresponds only to the 'wave' element of reality and quantum mechanics is incomplete. In this case ALL of its problems are rooted in the 'superposition' approach to particles. The C-field offers a 'particle' structure that corresponds to an element of reality that has no correspondence in quantum mechanics. Even the need for a Higgs field is based upon the fact that 'superpositions of wave functions' cannot produce or explain mass. And the ideas of 'collapse of the wave function' lead to more confusion, up to and including the 'non-local, non-real' ideas associated with so-called 'violation of Bell's inequality'.

Edwin Eugene Klingman

anonymous, return at school , really, we understand why you do not put your real name....a comic , a kind of frustrated of the sciences community, a kind of pseudo, a kind of ironic scientist....now you are going to increase probably your vanity due to my post, probably you have hate also, but you can evolve and contemplate the 3D as a flower or the hopes of the wind or this and that.....but I doubt you can understande what is a real contemplation of creations with humility....thus vanity vs humility...of course we know the winner ...fortunally furthermore.

Steve

"quantum non-locality" is nothing but a make-belief of the topologically naive.

-- I wish you would explain this a bit more...

I have explained what I mean by that in some eight papers, the latest of which can be found here (see especially the last of its references).

Why, if you indeed have a local model, do you not answer the

Quantum Crackpot Randi Challenge that has been developed specifically for you and been published on Science2.0?

It has already been met.

I have discussed older versions Joy Christian's "disproof of Bell's inequality", for example here and in this thread.

A short look at the new papers suggests that nothing has changed.

A short look at his propaganda thread suggests that the prejudices and ignorance of Ilja Schmelzer have not changed, and that my work is not everyone's cup of tea.

Joy Christian

By the way, I have never claimed to have disproved an inequality. No one can disprove an inequality like 2 < 3.

Joy,

In relation to your work and to Michael Atiyah thesis, I wish to mention a preprint where a clear role is proposed for division and non-division alebras in describing the four fundamental forces of nature. Implementing the information paradigm (Wheeler), both gauge symmetries of the standard model and lorentz invariance emerge, from quantum-information processing, to compensate the arbitrary introduced by any computational basis on a closed quantum system.

The preprint mentioned in the post may be found at http://arxiv.org/abs/1106.2133

Thank you, Stephane. I will have a look at your paper.

Joy

"No one can disprove an inequality like 2 < 3."

Exactly so. Leslie Lamport ("Buridan's Principle," 1984)addressed this problem of making a decision (or measurement) in a bounded length of time:

"A real Stern-Gerlach apparatus does not produce the discrete statistical

distribution of electron trajectories usually ascribed to it in simplified

descriptions. Instead, it produces a continuous distribution having two maxima,

but with a nonzero probability of finding an electron in any finite region

between them. Trying to decide if the electron is deflected up or down then

becomes just another instance of the problem of making a discrete decision

based upon a continuous input value, so nothing has been gained by

measuring the discrete spin value.

"Validity of Buridan's Principle implies the following:

"Buridan's Law of Measurement. If x < y < z, then any measurement performed in a bounded length of time that has a nonzero probability of yielding a value in a neighborhood of x and a nonzero probability of yielding a value in a neighborhood of z must also have a nonzero probability of yielding a value in a neighborhood of y.

"If this law is not valid, then one can find a counterexample to Buridan's Principle, with the discrete decision being: 'Is the value greater or less than y?' There does not seem to be a quantum-mechanical theory of measurement

from which one can derive Buridan's Law of Measurement."

Lamport goes on to describe the experimental challenge in terms of classical continuous functions:

"Buridan's Principle rests upon mathematical concepts of continuity and boundedness that are not physically observable. No real experiment, having finite precision, can demonstrate the presence or absence of continuity, which is defined in terms of limits. No experiment can demonstrate that an arbiter requires an unbounded length of time to reach a decision. An experiment in which the arbiter failed to decide within a week does not prove that it would not always decide within a year.

"To understand the meaning of Buridan's Principle as a scientific law,

consider the analogous problem with classical mechanics. Kepler's first law states that the orbit of a planet is an ellipse. This is not experimentally verifiable because any finite-precision measurement of the orbit is consistent with an infinite number of mathematical curves. In practice, what we can deduce from Kepler's law is that measurement of the orbit will, to a good approximation, be consistent with the predicted ellipse."

Joy Christian's experimental paraemters are classical, as were Bell's. His measure criteria, therefore, are predictive without being probabilistic. Any experimental model is finite in space and bounded in time. Quantum mechanical experiments assume that reality is finite in time (t = 1) and unbounded in space, therefore nonlocal. A local realistic model finite in space and unbounded in time is a classical measurement scheme that -- like Kepler's orbits -- makes a closed judgment to arbitrary accuracy of determined particle paths and momenta as t --> T, according to the specified topology in which the functions are complete, continuous and real.

Tom

An ad hominem and an irrelevant trivial error in the formulation (inequality instead of theorem) is all you have to answer? Not much.

It would be interesting, at least for me, if you would support the claim of "the prejudices and ignorance of Ilja Schmelzer" with some evidence.

I think this should be quite easy, once my argument is quite easy.

The experimental data in Bell-type experiments are frequencies p(AB|ab). These are used to define the expectation values E(ab) = sum AB p(AB|ab). Here the A, B are classical results of observations, which are well-defined and +1. A model which explains Aspect-like experiments should be able to predict the observed frequencies p(AB|ab), which is not done.

Or at least I have not yet seen it done. Feel free to do it here.

Here is one central post from the thread with my argument in more detail.

Here are my papers in detail. Read them. Understand them. And then there can be any chance of a dialogue between us. So far what I have seen from you is nothing but bookish knowledge, prejudices, and a total lack of understanding of my argument---the proof of this fact is already there in your very post if you have the eyes to see it.

I have asked you a quite simple question. Again, even simpler: Have you provided, in one of your papers, a local model which predicts probabilities p(A,B|a,b) so that the corresponding expectation values E(a,b)=sum AB p(A,B|a,b) violate Bell's inequalities?

If yes, tell me the paper and the pages. If not, that's my point.

In this case, explain where is the error in my argument. I think the probabilities p(A,B|a,b) are predicted by QM and corresponding frequencies are measured in experiments, in a quite open way, without anything hidden. So any realistic model has to recover them.

What's your problem with explaining me the simple error in such a simple argument? Of course, I have no eyes to see my own errors, else I would not make them. That's a tautology. So, please help a poor soul, who is unable to understand your deep thoughts, to see his trivial error.

Else, I wish you succes with publishing your model in a good journal - it would be a nice possibility for me to receive some explanation of my error by peer review, or to publish a rebuttal there.

They should put this somewhere with open access, like arxiv.org. I don't recognize hidden science, or science which requires $31.50 for research usually paid by the taxpayers.

Judging from the abstract alone, it may be simply using the detector efficiency loophole, in this case it would be of no interest at all.