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Abstract
This thesis consists of a study of the general spin Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment, with a view to seeing how classical behavior is recovered in the infinite-spin limit.
In Bohm's version of the experiment, two spin-s particles fly apart in the singlet state. Quantum theory predicts that if the spin of one particle is measured to be m along a direction a, the other will necessarily have a sping of -m along a. Since the spins of the two far apart particles can be measured in an infinitesimal time interval, the requirement of locality suggests that the particles' spins are predetermined along all directions, in defiance of quantum theoretic precepts.
It was shown by Bell and by Clauser and Horne that an alternative point of view called local realism which attempts to explain the spin correlations by introducing hidden variables mut be incompatible with the quantitative predictions of quantum theory for spin- 1/2. Chapters II and III of this thesis contain extensions of their arguments to arbitrary spin. It is found that no matter how large the spin gets, quantum mechanics and local realism do not become more compatible, and classical mechanics does not emerge as a smooth infinite-spin limit.
Chapter IV gives a general procedure (with several examples) for deciding whether or not a given set of joint distributions for the spins of the two particles is compatible with local realism.
In Chapter V it is argued that local realism can emerge in the infinite-spin limit only if limitations in detector resolution (quite unrelated to those imposed by the uncertainty principle) are explicitly included. Some questions stemming from this point of view are answered for spin- 1/2, and a specific model for including detector error is studied for higher spin.
