Disentanglement as particles separate

B. C. Sanctuary

Published 2003-10-03Version 1

Disentanglement refers to decoherence that destroys the quantum interference terms between particles as they separate. This process reduces the pure isotropic entangled EPR state to a mixed anisotropic state. Averaging over the ensemble of states leads to correlations between separated particles that satisfies Bell's inequalities. Applying disentanglement to EPR pairs of photons shows that entanglement is characterized by various two-particle symmetry properties. These symmetry properties are destroyed by disentanglement but photon helicity is conserved. This is sufficient to account for the correlations needed to resolve the EPR paradox. Apart from a numerical factor, the functional form for the correlations due to entanglement and disentanglement is identical, thereby making it difficult to distinguish between the two in the current experiments.