Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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SYRP: Intersectional Symposium The Concept of Reality in Physics

SYRP 2: The Concept of Reality in Physics II

SYRP 2.1: Invited Talk

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 16:30–17:00, HSZ 01

What can we learn from Bell’s inequalities violations: the answers of Einstein and Feynman — •Alain Aspect — Institut d’Optique, Palaiseau, France

In 1935, with Podolsky and Rosen, Einstein discovered an amazing quantum situation, where particles in a pair are so strongly correlated that Schrödinger called them “entangled”. By analyzing that situation, Einstein concluded that the quantum formalism had to be completed in order to be compatible with his world view, local realism. Niels Bohr immediately opposed that conclusion, and the debate lasted until the death of these two giants of physics, in the 1950’s. In 1964, John Bell produced his famous inequalities which would allow experimentalists to settle the debate, and to show that local realism is untenable.

What can we conclude? Reading Einstein’s argument in defense of local realism, we can find hints about what to abandon among concepts inherited from classical physics. But according to Feynman, this renouncement actually opens new possibilities…