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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik
AGPhil 1: Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
AGPhil 1.1: Vortrag
Dienstag, 17. März 2015, 14:00–14:30, A 060
On Causal Explanations of Quantum Nonlocality — •Martin Schuele1 and Ämin Baumeler2 — 1IHPST Paris, France — 2Institute of Informatics, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
Quantum nonlocality is the phenomenon that entangled quantum systems can exhibit instantaneous correlations between space-like separated measurements that cannot be explained by local variables, i.e., need communication.
Because such ``correlations cry out for explanations'', as Bell put it, a prominent move to interpret nonlocality is by postulating a causal influence between the space-like separated parts of the entangled system, i.e., the correlations are due to a causal connection between the parts of the system. As this assumption seems to be at odds with the causal structure imposed by special relativity, various schemes needed to be proposed to mediate between the quantum-theoretical and experimental findings and special relativity.
We will criticize this approach to an explanation of nonlocality by first reporting on various findings in quantum information science that provide evidence against some superluminal causal influence and, secondly and more generally, by arguing that the counterfactual account of causation usually assumed in these treatments gives a wrong or at least ambiguous picture of causation in this case. Instead, we argue for an interventionist account of causation which says that there is no causal connection between the space-like separated parts of the quantum system showing nonlocality.