Quantum paradoxes and time series analysis

ALEJANDRO HNILO

Workshop; Fourth “Río de la Plata” Workshop on laser dynamics and nonlinear photonics; 2009

The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox is the most enduring and challenging problem in the history of Physics. It refers to a contradiction between Quantum Mechanics (QM) and a set of intuitive, hard to leave notions on the separability of natural phenomena and even on the existence of a real world outside our own mind. After being discussed by four generations of physicists (amounting a number of brilliant individuals much larger than the sum of all the previous generations) and still remain unsolved, it seems clear that it will hardly be elucidated by mere thinking, and that new experimental data may be the key. Many experiments have measured stationary probabilities confirming the QM predictions, but “the vital time factor”, as John S. Bell named it, has been left almost unexplored. The so-called “non ergodic theories”, on the other hand, reconcile QM with intuition by hypothesizing that the apparent randomness at the quantum level is the consequence of some complex, perhaps chaotic, nonlinear dynamics underlying. These dynamics are not detectable by measuring averaged rates, but they may be revealed through the analysis of the series formed by recording the time of observation of each single event (the detection of a photon, in our case). Even though the hope of success is small, the consequences of actually finding them are so important that the search is anyway justified. In this talk, results of the search of dynamics in the data of time resolved EPR-Bohm type optical setups are reviewed or presented, and also a description of the characteristics the ideal experiment to test the non-ergodic hypothesis should have.