Time-Reversed EPR and the Choice of Histories in Quantum Mechanics
Abstract
When a single photon is split by a beam splitter, its two `halves' can entangle two distant atoms into an EPR pair. We discuss a time-reversed analogue of this experiment where two distant sources cooperate so as to emit a single photon. The two `half photons,' having interacted with two atoms, can entangle these atoms into an EPR pair once they are detected as a single photon. Entanglement occurs by creating indistinguishabilility between the two mutually exclusive histories of the photon. This indistinguishabilility can be created either at the end of the two histories (by `erasing' the single photon's path) or at their beginning (by `erasing' the two atoms' positions).
Cite
@article{arxiv.quant-ph/0205182,
title = {Time-Reversed EPR and the Choice of Histories in Quantum Mechanics},
author = {Avshalom C. Elitzur and Shahar Dolev and Anton Zeilinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:quant-ph/0205182},
year = {2017}
}
Comments
6 pages, 5 figures. Presented at the Solvay Conference in Physics, November 2001, Delphi, Greece. To be published in Quantum Computers and Computing, 2002 and in the Proceedings of XXII Solvay Conference in Physics. New York: World Scientific, 2002