Mechanism of wavefunction collapse in measurements of separated quantum subsystems

Abstract

The specific advance of this work is to propose a mechanism by which superpositions collapse during measurement of the separated subsystems of entangled quantum states. It is shown how the phase that locks together entangled states plays a special role in the measurement of isolated subsystems. This `contextual' phase is installed randomly into the entangled state, and decides the measurement outcomes for the subsystems by directing the collapse of each superposition to a particular classical outcome when a subsystem is measured. The measuring apparatus thus obtains a classical read-out of the quantum correlations embedded in an entangled state. More broadly, these results solidify the theory of measurement of quantum superpositions.