Re:Quantum ‘spookiness’ passes toughest test yet
by dools on Sunday August 30, 2015 @07:51PM
(#10144824)
Yes that's a good way of putting it. What I've seen around is talk that "measurement of one particle effects the other" and often people use the term "collapse the wave function of the other particle" to articulate this (because they'd heard the term). The fact that the entangled state of the 2 particles is described by the same wave function resolves this.
The mathematical meaning of the statement "two things are entangled" is that you cannot factor the states into the product of two separate quantities. So there is only one equation for the two particles. So once you "collapse" this for one particle (whether or not collapse is a physical action) it is by necessity collapsed for the other particle, because there is no other state that could not be collapsed.