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pavilionaire2022 t1_j8gz3bp wrote

Reply to comment by Weed_O_Whirler in Light traveling through a medium that slows it. Does the same photon emerge? by TheGandPTurtle

It's not possible to label a photon, but not all photons are indistinguishable. So can we rephrase the question as, are the photon properties, such as spin, conserved? If the photon that enters is entangled with another, is the photon that emerges also entangled?

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tpolakov1 t1_j8jji5t wrote

Yes and no. The entanglement will be most certainly lost if it flies through a room temperature chunk of material consisting of billions of atoms.

In a more idealized case of it interacting with just a single cold atom, it can be preserved and will entangle with the atom also.

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