Attempt to resolve the EPR-Bell paradox via Reichenbach's concept of common cause

DOI10.1023/A:1003691216444zbMATH Open0987.81019arXivquant-ph/9806074OpenAlexW1630149436MaRDI QIDQ1586487FDOQ1586487

Authors: László E. Szabó 

Publication date: 27 June 2002

Published in: International Journal of Theoretical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle claims that if there is correlation between two events and none of them is directly causally influenced by the other, then there must exist a third event that can, as a common cause, account for the correlation. The EPR-Bell paradox consists in the problem that we observe correlations between spatially separated events in the EPR-experiments, which do not admit common-cause-type explanation; and it must therefore be inevitably concluded, that, contrary to relativity theory, in the realm of quantum physics there exists action at a distance, or at least superluminal causal propagation is possible; that is, either relativity theory or Reichenbach's common cause principle fails. By means of closer analyses of the concept of common cause and a more precise reformulation of the EPR experimental scenario, I will sharpen the conclusion we can draw from the violation of Bell's inequalities. It will be explicitly shown that the correla-tions we encounter in the EPR experiment could have common causes; that is, Reichen-bach's Common Cause Principle does not fail in quantum mechanics. Moreover, these common causes satisfy the locality conditions usually required. In the Revised Version of the paper I added a Postscript from which it turns out that the solution such obtained is, contrary to the original title, incomplete. It turns out that a new problem arises: some combinations of the common cause events do statistically cor-relate with the measurement operations.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9806074

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zbMATH Keywords

action at a distancesuperluminal causal propagationviolation of Bell's inequalities

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Quantum computation (81P68) General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05)

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• The limits of common cause approach to EPR correlation
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• Separate common causal explanation and the Bell inequalities
• Bell\((\delta )\) inequalities derived from separate common causal explanation of almost perfect EPR anticorrelations
• On the meaning of EPR's reality criterion
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• Separate- versus \textit{common}-common-cause-type derivations of the Bell inequalities
• Charges and electromagnetic radiation as topological excitations
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