Joseph Henson (Imperial College London) – “Locality Reinstated?”

Monday 21st October; 17:15pm – 18:45pm
SIGMA

Speaker: Joseph Henson; Imperial College London

Title: Locality Reinstated?

Abstract: The assumptions of Bell’s theorem were meant by its author to to characterise a lack of any physical superluminal influences. The “Quantum non-locality” he discovered does violence not only to our intuitions; but arguably also to any thoroughgoing attempts to apply causal explanation in QM.

It is natural to wonder if there is a better way to characterise locality (= lack of superluminal influence) that is consistent with QM; thereby resolving an apparent contradiction by discarding some conceptual “excess baggage.” However; in order to do this we must be careful to preserve what is essential in the idea of locality. In this talk; I will describe a particular view of Bell’s condition; and point out a (hopefully uncontroversial) list of conditions that any reinstated “locality” should obey. I will then apply these conditions to a number of candidates in the literature; including some treatments of locality in many-worlds QM; Howard’s non-separability and “super-determinism;” and find them to be violated. Finally I will speculate about the extent to which a useful concept of locality textit{can} be preserved in QM.

Venue: LAK 2.06