Disentangling Quantum Entanglement

Abstract

Abstract What is the physical agent that causes noninteracting particles to get entangled? The theory developed in previous chapters is applied in the present one to give due response to this key question. For this purpose, the one-particle treatment presented in Chap. 5 is extendedExtended charge to systems of two particlesExtended particle that are embedded in the common zero-point fieldEntanglement!and zero-point field. The dynamical variables are shown to become correlated when the particles resonate to a common frequency of the background field. When the description is reduced to one in terms of matrices and vectors in the appropriate Hilbert space, the entangled state vectors emerge naturally. For systems of identical particles the properties of invariance of the field variables imply that entanglementEntanglement is maximal and must be described by totally (anti)symmetric states. The results thus obtained are applied to the HeliumHelium atom as a system with two electrons. As a result of entanglement, the total (orbital plus spin) stateHelium!spin states vectors turn out to be antisymmetric. States in which both particles are in the same orbital and spinorial state, are excluded because of the absence of a correlating field mode.