Entanglement of particles as a result of their coupling through the common background zero-point radiation field

This paper is intended to disclose a possible physical mechanism underlying entanglement, by allowing an (otherwise classical) system of two non-interacting particles to interact with the stochastic background zero-point radiation field. The present analysis is made in the framework of linear stochastic electrodynamics (LSED), a theory that has been shown to recover the corresponding matrix formulation of quantum mechanics when applied to a one-particle (or atomic) system. We start by briefly recalling the basic elements of LSED and then extend the theory to consider the system formed of two particles. It is found that when both particles resonate to at least one common frequency of the background field, a new class of non-factorizable states emerge that correspond just to the entangled states of quantum mechanics. In the particular case of two equal particles the ensuing states are those of maximum entanglement.