Communication faster than light or where is my mistake?

AI Thread Summary
The discussion centers on a proposed method for communicating faster than light using entangled photons. The setup involves two observers, Alice and Bob, with a source of entangled photons between them. The argument suggests that if Alice changes her polarizer, the polarization state of Bob's photon would instantaneously reflect that change, implying faster-than-light communication. However, it is pointed out that due to the principles of quantum mechanics, specifically the commutation of spacelike separated operators, no information can be transmitted faster than light, regardless of any experimental setups proposed. Ultimately, the conclusion is that the idea does not hold up under scrutiny, and the thread is closed.
jakeliuns
Messages
2
Reaction score
0
Hello, here is some reasoning how I got possibility to communicate faster than light.
Likely somewhere are mistakes, but I can not find them by myself.

Let's consider very simple setup with observers Alice, Bob and a source of entangled photons in-between of them like so:

Alice...Source........Bob

Let's say distance (Source........Bob) is twice as (Alice...Source)

Also let's say both observers have polarizers oriented equally, let's say vertically.

Now let's begin the experiment. Source emits pairs of entangled photons.
Left photon goes to Alice and right photon goes to Bob.
Let's name them like photon (L) and photon (R).

When photon (L) hits Alice's polarizer wave function collapse is happening.
But photon (R) is still traveling. Let's say it is at point X during the collapse of mentioned wave function.

Alice...Source...X...Bob

Because of wave function collapse right photon (R) gets defined polarization.
As I mentioned earlier both polarizers are oriented vertically,
so the photon (R) at point X could get vertical or horizontal polarization
(exactly the same polarization like photon (L) who just passed Alice's polarizer).

So like a sequence both photons will act equally at both polarizers.

Until now nothing strange was detected.
But let's say distances are big enough.
Now let's Alice rotates her polarizer by 45 degree.

When next photon (L) will hit this polarizer opposite photon (R) also will get diagonal polarization at mentioned point X. This polarization will be diagonal like so “/” or like so “\”

Now we see that some sort of information from Alice to point X travels instantly
and only from point X to Bob information travels with velocity c.
Ones again if Alice puts her polarizer vertically Bob will get 50% of vertically polarized
photons and 50% horizontally polarized photons.
But if Alice turns her polarizer by 45 degree Bob will get 50% of photons by this “/” diagonal polarization and 50% by this “\” diagonal polarization.

The question is can Bob separate which photons are coming now,
with polarization like so “|”and “--”
or like so “/” and “\” ?

If Bob can experimentally separate these 2 cases he can get information from Alice faster than light, because information about the angle of Alice's polarizer travels instantly from her to point X.
What do you think?
 
Science news on Phys.org
jakeliuns said:
If Bob can experimentally separate these 2 cases
But he can't.
 
Likely you are right, but still let's try to invent some measuring procedure to separate mentioned 2 cases.
What if Bob obtain single photons from incoming beam and send them to amplifier.
Let's say from 1 single photon he gets 1000 of them. All of them will have the same polarization.

Now Bob splits these photons into 10 (or more) groups and each group of photons sends to a separate polarizer. Let each polarizer has different angle of polarization.

From the total outcome how all these 1000 photons have passed all polarizers could be possible to find out polarization of the initial photon Bob was measured.

Am I right or maybe here are some more mistakes?
 
It doesn't work this way. Spacelike separated operators commute, so there is simply no possible way that anything done on one photon will affect the outcome of a measurement of another photon faster than light. It doesn't matter if you use an amplifier a beam splitter or whatever.

Personal speculation is not permitted. Thread closed.
 
Thread 'A quartet of epi-illumination methods'
Well, it took almost 20 years (!!!), but I finally obtained a set of epi-phase microscope objectives (Zeiss). The principles of epi-phase contrast is nearly identical to transillumination phase contrast, but the phase ring is a 1/8 wave retarder rather than a 1/4 wave retarder (because with epi-illumination, the light passes through the ring twice). This method was popular only for a very short period of time before epi-DIC (differential interference contrast) became widely available. So...
I am currently undertaking a research internship where I am modelling the heating of silicon wafers with a 515 nm femtosecond laser. In order to increase the absorption of the laser into the oxide layer on top of the wafer it was suggested we use gold nanoparticles. I was tasked with modelling the optical properties of a 5nm gold nanoparticle, in particular the absorption cross section, using COMSOL Multiphysics. My model seems to be getting correct values for the absorption coefficient and...
After my surgery this year, gas remained in my eye for a while. The light air bubbles appeared to sink to the bottom, and I realized that the brain was processing the information to invert the up/down/left/right image transferred to the retina. I have a question about optics and ophthalmology. Does the inversion of the image transferred to the retina depend on the position of the intraocular focal point of the lens of the eye? For example, in people with farsightedness, the focal point is...
Back
Top