Quantum Entanglement - History

History

The counterintuitive predictions of quantum mechanics about strongly correlated systems were first discussed by Albert Einstein in 1935, in a joint paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen. In this study, they formulated the EPR paradox (Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen Paradox), a thought experiment that attempted to show that quantum mechanical theory was incomplete. They wrote:

We are thus forced to conclude that the quantum-mechanical description of physical reality given by wave functions is not complete.

However, they did not coin the word entanglement nor did they generalize the special properties of the state they considered. Following the EPR paper, Erwin Schrödinger wrote a letter (in German) to Einstein in which he used the word Verschränkung (translated by himself as entanglement) "to describe the correlations between two particles that interact and then separate, as in the EPR experiment". He shortly thereafter published a seminal paper defining and discussing the notion, and terming it "entanglement". In the paper he recognized the importance of the concept, and stated:

I would not call one but rather the characteristic trait of quantum mechanics, the one that enforces its entire departure from classical lines of thought.

Like Einstein, Schrödinger was dissatisfied with the concept of entanglement, because it seemed to violate the speed limit on the transmission of information implicit in the theory of relativity. Einstein later famously derided entanglement as "spukhafte Fernwirkung" or "spooky action at a distance".

The EPR paper generated significant interest among physicists and inspired much discussion about the foundations of quantum mechanics (perhaps most famously Bohm's interpretation of quantum mechanics), but relatively little other published work. So, despite the interest, the flaw in EPR's argument was not discovered until 1964, when John Stewart Bell demonstrated precisely how one of their key assumptions, the principle of locality, conflicted with quantum theory. Specifically, he demonstrated an upper limit, known as Bell's inequality, regarding the strength of correlations that can be produced in any theory obeying local realism, and he showed that quantum theory predicts violations of this limit for certain entangled systems. His inequality is experimentally testable, and there have been numerous relevant experiments, starting with the pioneering work of Freedman and Clauser in 1972 and Aspect's experiments in 1982. They have all shown agreement with quantum mechanics rather than the principle of local realism. However, the issue is not finally settled, for each of these experimental tests has left open at least one loophole by which it is possible to question the validity of the results.

The work of Bell raised the possibility of using these super strong correlations as a resource for communication. It led to the discovery of quantum key distribution protocols, most famously BB84 by Bennet and Brassard and E91 by Artur Ekert. Although BB84 does not use entanglement, Ekert's protocol uses the violation of a Bell's inequality as a proof of security.

David Kaiser of MIT mentioned in his book, How the Hippies Saved Physics, that the possibilities of instantaneous long-range communication derived from Bell's theorem stirred interest among hippies, psychics, and even the CIA, with the counter-culture playing a critical role in its development toward practical use.