Bell's theorem and the experiments: Increasing empirical support to local realism
Emilio Santos
备注：
28 pages
发表信息：
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics Volume 36, Issue 3, September 2005, Pages 544-565
It is argued that local realism is a fundamental principle, which might be rejected only if experiments clearly show that it is untenable. A critical review is presented of the derivations of Bell's inequalities and the performed experiments, with the conclusion that no valid, loophole-free, test exists of local realism vs. quantum mechanics. It is pointed out that, without any essential modification, quantum mechanics might be compatible with local realism. This suggests that the principle may be respected by nature.
I argue that quantum mechanics is a realistic theory, but it violates either strong locality (no superluminal influences) or strict causality (diiferent effects cannot follow from the same cause).
The logical foundations of Bell's inequality are reexamined. We argue that the form of the reality condition that underpins Bell's inequality comes from the requirement of solving the quantum measurement problem. Hence any violation of Bell's inequality necessarily implies nonlocality because of the measurement problem. The differences in the implications of deterministic and stochastic formulations of Bell's inequality are highlighted. The reality condition used in Bell's inequality is shown to be a generalisation of Einstein's later form of realism.
We suggest to test the premise of ``macroscopic local realism'' which is sufficient to derive Bell inequalities when measurements of photon number are only accurate to an uncertainty of order $n$ photons, where $n$ is macroscopic. Macroscopic local realism is only sufficient to imply, in the context of the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen argument, fuzzy ``elements of reality'' which have a macroscopic indeterminacy. We show therefore how the violation of local realism in the presence of macroscopic uncertainties implies the failure of ``macroscopic local realism''. Quantum states violating th…
We exhibit a local-hidden-variable model in agreement with the results of the two-photon coincidence experiment made by Torgerson et al. [Phys. Lett. A 204 (1995) 323]. The existence of any such model shows that the experiment does not exclude local realism.
Quantum mechanics is strictly incompatible with local realism. It has been shown by Bell and others that it is possible, in principle, to experimentally differentiate between local realism and quantum mechanics. Numerous experiments have attempted to falsify local realism; however, they have consistently failed to close the detection loophole under strict locality conditions, thereby allowing local realistic explanations for their observations. In 2015, three experiments took place that tested local realism without the impediments of these significant loopholes. Between these three experiments…
It is shown that the model introduced by Cabello et al. to criticize the Franson experiment suffers from the same weakness as the previous model introduced by Aerts et al. with the same purpose. It is also shown why we can assume with confidence that the Franson experiment does violate local realism.
I point out critical errors in the paper "Bell's Theorem Versus Local Realism in a Quaternionic Model of Physical Space" by J. Christian, published in IEEE Access. Christian's paper in fact contains several conflicting models. None of them form counterexamples to Bell's theorem. Most of Christian's paper is devoted to a model based on the detection loophole due to Pearle (1970).
Objections to the use of inequalities to address foundational issues are considered and shown to be invalid. The Clauser-Horne (CH) inequality is considered and interpreted in this light. It is shown that, applied correctly, the CH inequality can validly test aspects of locality. This paper establishes a firm methodological ground for a following paper analyzing a recent CH experiment.
The two-particle correlation obtained from the quantum state used in the Bell inequality is sinusoidal, but the standard Bell inequality only uses two pairs of settings and not the whole sinusoidal curve. The highest to-date visibility of an explicit model reproducing sinusoidal fringes is 2/pi. We conjecture from a numerical approach presented in this paper that the highest possible visibility for a local hidden variable model reproducing the sinusoidal character of the quantum prediction for the two-particle Bell-type interference phenomena is 1/sqrt2. In addition, the approach can be applie…
Locality and realism are two main assumptions in deriving Bell's inequalities. Though the experimentally demonstrated violations of Bell's inequalities rule out local realism, it is, however, not clear what role each of the two assumptions solely plays in the observed violations. Here we show that two testable inequalities for the statistical predictions of two-qubit systems can be derived by assuming either locality or realism. It turns out that quantum mechanics respects a nonlocal classical realism, and it is locality that is incompatible with experimental observations and quantum mechanics…
We introduce an all-versus-nothing proof of impossibility of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen's local elements of reality for two photons entangled both in polarization and path degrees of freedom, which leads to a Bell's inequality where the classical bound is 8 and the quantum prediction is 16. A simple estimation of the detection efficiency required to close the detection loophole using this proof gives eta > 0.69. This efficiency is lower than that required for previous proposals.
We formulate the expectation value of the Bell-Zukowski operator acting on qubit states of a two-particle Bell experiment. By using the equivalence between a set of N copies of a two-qubit experiment and a standard two-setting Bell experiment in an entangled 2N-particle state, we obtain an inequality, which we may call the Bell-Zukowski inequality. It determines whether the measured correlation functions of two-particle states can be modeled locally and realistically. In this Bell experiment of two particles, the conflict between local realism and quantum mechanics is discussed in conjunction …
We examine the prevalent use of the phrase ``local realism'' in the context of Bell's Theorem and associated experiments, with a focus on the question: what exactly is the `realism' in `local realism' supposed to mean? Carefully surveying several possible meanings, we argue that all of them are flawed in one way or another as attempts to point out a second premise (in addition to locality) on which the Bell inequalities rest, and (hence) which might be rejected in the face of empirical data violating the inequalities. We thus suggest that the phrase `local realism' should be banned from future…
We introduce a new interpretation of quantum mechanics by examining the Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen's (EPR) paradox and Bell's inequality experiments under the assumption that the vacuum has an inhomogeneous texture for energy levels below the Heisenberg time-energy uncertainty relation. In this article, selected results from the most reliable Bell's inequality experiments will be quantitatively analyzed to show that our interpretation of quantum mechanics creates a new loophole in Bell's inequality, and that the past experimental findings do not contradict our new interpretation. Under the v…
The Bell's inequalities are derived from the hypotheses of Locality, Realism and (what is lesser known) the equality between the factual and the counterfactual time averages of the expectation values of observables. The necessity of a hypothesis additional to Local Realism opens a promising way out to the old controversy between Quantum Mechanics and Local Realism. For, it is possible to speculate that it is this additional hypothesis, and not Local Realism, what is disproved in the experiments reporting the violation of the Bell's inequalities. Yet, there are doubts on how the additional hypo…
Bell inequalities are intended to show that local realist theories cannot describe the world. A local realist theory is one where physical properties are defined prior to and independent of measurement, and no physical influence can propagate faster than the speed of light. Quantum-mechanical predictions for certain experiments violate the Bell inequality while a local realist theory cannot, and this shows that a local realist theory cannot give those quantum-mechanical predictions. However, because of unexpected circumstances or "loopholes" in available experiment tests, local realist theorie…
Violations of Bell inequalities have been an incontestable indicator of non-classicality since the seminal paper by John Bell. However, recent claims of Bell inequalities violations with classical light have cast some doubts on their significance as hallmarks of non-classicality. Here, we challenge those claims. The crux of the problem is that such classical experiments simulate quantum probabilities with intensities of classical fields. However, fields intensities measurements are radically different from single-photon detections, which are primitives of any genuine Bell experiment. We show t…
We introduce a two-observer all-versus-nothing proof of Bell's theorem which reduces the number of required quantum predictions from 9 [A. Cabello, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 010403 (2001); Z.-B. Chen et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 160408 (2003)] to 4, provides a greater amount of evidence against local realism, reduces the detection efficiency requirements for a conclusive experimental test of Bell's theorem, and leads to a Bell's inequality which resembles Mermin's inequality for three observers [N. D. Mermin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 1838 (1990)] but requires only two observers.
Chen (quant-ph/0611126) has recently claimed ``exponential violation of local realism by separable states", in the sense that multi-partite separable quantum states are supposed to give rise to correlations and fluctuations that violate a Bell-type inequality that Chen takes to be satisfied by local realism. However, this can not be true since all predictions (including all correlations and fluctuations) that separable quantum states give rise to have a local realistic description and thus satisfy all Bell-type inequalities, and this holds for all number of parties. Since Chen claims otherwise…
The usual formulation of Macrorealism is recast to make this notion fully concurrent with the basic ideas behind classical physics. The assumption of non-invasiveness of measurements is dropped. Instead, it is assumed that the current state of the system defines full initial conditions for its subsequent evolution. An example of a new family of temporal Bell inequalities is derived which can be applied to processes in which the state of the system undergoes arbitrarily many transformations (which was not the case in the original approach). An exponential (in terms of number of operations) viol…
We present Bell inequalities for graph states with high violation of local realism. In particular, we show that there is a two-setting Bell inequality for every nontrivial graph state which is violated by the state at least by a factor of two. These inequalities are facets of the convex polytope containing the many-body correlations consistent with local hidden variable models. We first present a method which assigns a Bell inequality for each graph vertex. Then for some families of graph states composite Bell inequalities can be constructed with a violation of local realism increasing exponen…
According to a widespread view, the Bell theorem establishes the untenability of so-called 'local realism'. On the basis of this view, recent proposals by Leggett, Zeilinger and others have been developed according to which it can be proved that even some non-local realistic theories have to be ruled out. As a consequence, within this view the Bell theorem allows one to establish that no reasonable form of realism, be it local or non-local, can be made compatible with the (experimentally tested) predictions of quantum mechanics. In the present paper it is argued that the Bell theorem has demon…
Fundamental principle of classical physics -- local realism, means that freely chosen observations can be explained by a local (slower than light) real process. It is apparently violated in quantum mechanics as shown by Bell theorem. Despite extreme efforts experiments have not conclusively confirmed this violation due to loopholes. We propose a new postulate that the description of quantum processes must be consistent with local realism, It also assumes existence of many worlds/copies of the same system, interacting weakly microscopically but strongly macroscopically, whose number can be esti…
We present a detailed analysis of assumptions that J. Bell used to show that local realism contradicts QM. We find that Bell's viewpoint on realism is nonphysical, because it implicitly assume that observed physical variables coincides with ontic variables (i.e., these variables before measurement). The real physical process of measurement is a process of dynamical interaction between a system and a measurement device. Therefore one should check the adequacy of QM not to ``Bell's realism,'' but to adaptive realism (chameleon realism). Dropping Bell's assumption we are able to construct a natur…
We consider relations between communication complexity problems and detecting correlations (violating local realism) with no local hidden variable model. We show first universal equivalence between characteristics of protocols used in that type of problems and non-signaling correlations. We construct non linear bipartite Bell type inequalities and strong nonlocality test with binary observables by providing general method of Bell inequalities construction and showing that existence of gap between quantum and classical complexity leads to violation of these inequalities. We obtain, first to our…
It has long been known that the "detection loophole", present when detector efficiencies are below a critical figure, could open the way for alternative "local realist" explanations for the violation of Bell tests. It has in recent years become common to assume the loophole can be ignored, regardless of which version of the Bell test is employed. A simple model is presented that illustrates that this may not be justified. Two of the versions -- the standard test of form -2 <= S <= 2 and the currently-popular "visibility" test -- are at grave risk of bias. Statements implying that experimental …
A standard approach in the foundations of quantum mechanics studies local realism and hidden variables models exclusively in terms of violations of Bell-like inequalities. Thus quantum nonlocality is tied to the celebrated no-go theorems, and these comprise a long list that includes the Kochen-Specker and Bell theorems, as well as elegant refinements by Mermin, Peres, Hardy, GHZ, and many others. Typically entanglement or carefully prepared multipartite systems have been considered essential for violations of local realism and for understanding quantum nonlocality. Here we show, to the contrar…
We present a detailed analysis of the set theoretical proof of Wigner for Bell type inequalities with the following result. Wigner introduced a crucial assumption that is not related to Einstein's local realism, but instead, without justification, to the existence of certain joint probability measures for possible and actual measurement outcomes of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiments. His conclusions about Einstein's local realism are, therefore, not applicable to EPR experiments and the contradiction of the experimental outcomes to Wigner's results has no bearing on the validity of Eins…
Bell's theorem shows that local realistic theories place strong restrictions on observable correlations between different systems, giving rise to Bell's inequality which can be violated in experiments using entangled quantum states. Bell's theorem is based on the assumptions of realism, locality, and the freedom to choose between measurement settings. In experimental tests, "loopholes" arise which allow observed violations to still be explained by local realistic theories. Violating Bell's inequality while simultaneously closing all such loopholes is one of the most significant still open chal…
We consider tests of Leggett-Garg's macrorealism and of macroscopic local realism, where for spacelike separated measurements the assumption of macroscopic noninvasive measurability is justified by that of macroscopic locality. We give a mapping between the Bell and Leggett-Garg experiments for microscopic qubits based on spin $1/2$ eigenstates and gedanken experiments for macroscopic qubits based on two macroscopically distinct coherent states (cat states). In this mapping, the unitary rotation of the Stern-Gerlach analyzer is realized by an interaction $H=Ω\hat{n}^{4}$ where $\hat{n}$ is the…
Statistical tests are needed to determine experimentally whether a hypothetical theory based on local realism can be an acceptable alternative to quantum mechanics. It is impossible to rule out local realism by a single test, as often claimed erroneously. The ``strength'' of a particular Bell inequality is measured by the number of trials that are needed to invalidate local realism at a given confidence level. Various versions of Bell's inequality are compared from this point of view. It is shown that Mermin's inequality for Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states requires fewer tests than the Clau…
In this paper, I respond to a critique of one of my papers previously published in this journal, entitled "Bell's Theorem Versus Local Realism in a Quaternionic Model of Physical Space." That paper presents a local-realistic model of quantum correlations based on a quaternionic 3-sphere, taken as a physical space in which we are confined to perform all our experiments. The critique, on the other hand, considers two entirely different models within a flat Euclidean space, neither related to my quaternionic 3-sphere model. It then criticizes its own flat space models and claims that it has there…
We consider typical experiments that use Bell-inequalities to test local-realist theories of quantum mechanics and gain insight into how certain results can be obtained. We see that results against local-realism arise from some `quantum skew' of the correlation between entangled qubit pairs. Furthermore, we find some conditions necessary for a conclusion against local-realism. Finally we show that the problem of `no-signalling' that arises in these experiments cannot be reduced to arbitrary experimental accuracy.
We discuss the recently observed "loophole free" violation of Bell's inequalities in the framework of a physically realist view of quantum mechanics, which requires that physical properties are attributed jointly to a system, and to the context in which it is embedded. This approach is clearly different from classical realism, but it does define a meaningful "quantum realism" from a general philosophical point of view. Consistently with Bell test experiments, this quantum realism embeds some form of non-locality, but does not contain any action at a distance, in agreement with quantum mechanic…
Some new temporal Bell inequalities are deduced under joint realism assumption, using some perfect correlation property. No locality condition is needed. When the measured system is a macroscopic system, joint realism assumption substitutes the non-invasive measurabilioty hypothesis advantegeously, provided that the system satisfies the perfect correlation property. The new inequalities are violated quantically. This violation can be more severe than the similar violation in the case of precedent temporal Bell inequalities. Some microscopic and mesoscopic situations in which these inequalities…
There is a direct correspondence between two-particle, entangled quantum states, for example, Bell states, and the relative values of the component one-particle states. This leads to a new rationale for quantum computing which makes use of sequential processing of one-particle states rather than the parallel processing associated with multiparticle states. It is shown that deterministic transformations can correspond to certain Bell state operations. There are some implications for the continuing discussion of quantum realism and entanglement. A principle of relative realism is advocated.
The claim that the observation of a violation of a Bell inequality leads to an alleged alternative between nonlocality and non-realism is annoying because of the vagueness of the second term.
Some new Bell inequalities for consecutive measurements are deduced under joint realism assumption, using some perfect correlation property. No locality condition is needed. When the measured system is a macroscopic system, joint realism assumption substitutes the non-invasive hypothesis advantageously, provided that the system satisfies the perfect correlation property. The new inequalities are violated quantically. This violation can be expected to be more severe than in the case of precedent temporal Bell inequalities. Some microscopic and mesoscopic situations, in which the new inequalitie…
It is currently widely accepted, as a result of Bell's theorem and related experiments, that quantum mechanics is inconsistent with local realism and there is the so called quantum non-locality. We show that such a claim can be justified only in a simplified approach to quantum mechanics when one neglects the fundamental fact that there exist space and time. Mathematical definitions of local realism in the sense of Bell and in the sense of Einstein are given. We demonstrate that if we include into the quantum mechanical formalism the space-time structure in the standard way then quantum mechan…
The experimentally verified violation of Bell's inequalities apparently implies that at least one of two intuitive beliefs must be false: that effects propagating at infinite velocity do not exist, and that natural phenomena occur independently of being observed. Giving up any one of these two beliefs (usually known together as Local Realism) is controversial. Many theories have been proposed to reconcile the violation of Bell's inequalities with Local Realism, but none has been fully successful. In this paper, it is recalled that any theory aimed to violate Bell's inequalities must start by g…
Assuming perfect detection efficiency, we present an (indeterministic) model for an EPR-Bohm experiment which reproduces the singlet correlations, without contradicting Bell's original locality condition. In this model we allow the probability distribution $ρ_λ$ of the state $λ$ at the source to depend parametrically on the orientation $ξ$ of one of the measuring devices: $ρ_λ(λ,ξ)$. In a Bell experiment, no-signaling between the source and each one of the devices would seem clearly sufficient to rule such an influence; however, not even schemes where the choice of observables takes place duri…
It is briefly demonstrated that Gisin's so-called 'locality' assumption [arXiv:0901.4255] is in fact equivalent to the existence of a local deterministic model. Thus, despite Gisin's suggestions to the contrary, 'local realism' in the sense of Bell is built into his argument from the very beginning. His 'locality' assumption may more appropriately be labelled 'separability'. It is further noted that the increasingly popular term 'quantum nonlocality' is not only misleading, but tends to obscure the important distinction between no-signalling and separability. In particular, 'local non-realism'…
The conjecture is made that quantum mechanics is compatible with local hidden variables (or local realism). The conjecture seems to be ruled out by the theoretical argument of Bell, but it is supported by the empirical fact that nobody has been able to perform a loophole-free test of local realism in spite of renewed effort during almost 40 years.
A new interpretation offers a consistent conceptual basis for nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The violation of Bell's inequality is explained by maintaining realism, inductive inference and Einstein separability.
Recently, a group of experiments tested local realism with random choices prepared by humans. These various tests were subject to additional assumptions, which lead to loopholes in the interpretations of almost all of the experiments. Among these assumptions are fair sampling, no signaling, and faithful reproduction of a Bell-type quantum model. We examined the data from 9 of 13 experiments and analyzed occurring anomalies in view of the above assumptions. We conclude that further tests of local realism need better setup calibration to avoid apparent signaling or necessity of the complicated u…
In 1985, Leggett and Garg put forward the concept of macroscopic realism (macrorealism) and, in analogy to Bell's theorem, derived a necessary condition in terms of inequalities, which are now known as the Leggett-Garg inequalities. In this paper, we discuss another necessary condition called no-signaling in time. It solely bases on comparing the probability distribution for a macrovariable at some time for the cases where previously a measurement has or has not been performed. Although the concept is analogous to the no-signaling condition in the case of Bell tests, it can be violated accordi…
Loophole-free experiments have demonstrated that at least one of three features is false when the violation of Bell's inequalities is observed: Locality, Realism or (what is lesser known) Ergodicity. An experiment is proposed to find out, or at least to get an indication about, which one is false. It is based on recording the time evolution of the rate of series of outcomes that are found not-random in a pulsed Bell's setup. The results of such experiment would be important not only to the foundations of Quantum Mechanics. For, even if the foundational issue remained not fully decided, they wo…
Quantum codewords are highly entangled combinations of two-state systems. The standard assumptions of local realism lead to logical contradictions similar to those found by Bell, Kochen and Specker, Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger, and Mermin. The new contradictions have some noteworthy features that did not appear in the older ones.
By assuming a deterministic evolution of quantum systems and taking realism into account, we carefully build a hidden variable theory for Quantum Mechanics based on the notion of ontological states proposed by 't Hooft. We view these ontological states as the ones embedded with realism and compare them to the (usual) quantum states that represent superpositions, viewing the latter as mere information of the system they describe. Such a deterministic model puts forward conditions for the applicability of Bell's inequality: the usual inequality cannot be applied to the usual experiments. We buil…
A new definition of "Realism" is proposed: it is that a gedanken "spectrograph" of hidden variables behaves as an actual (say, wavelength) spectrograph. The question is: does this definition allow, by itself, the derivation of Bell's inequalities? If it were, then such a spectrograph would be impossible, for Bell's inequalities are observed to be violated. In this short paper it is reported that, on the contrary, such spectrograph is compatible with the violation of Bell's inequalities. This result puts some new light on the controversy about the hypotheses necessary to derive Bell's inequalit…
Cluster states are a new type of multiqubit entangled states with entanglement properties exceptionally well suited for quantum computation. In the present work, we experimentally demonstrate that correlations in a four-qubit linear cluster state cannot be described by local realism. This exploration is based on a recently derived Bell-type inequality [V. Scarani et al., Phys. Rev A 71, 042325 (2005)] which is tailored, by using a combination of three- and four-particle correlations, to be maximally violated by cluster states but not violated at all by GHZ states. We observe a cluster state Be…
Almost all Bell-inequality experiments to date have used postselection, and therefore relied on the fair sampling assumption for their interpretation. The standard form of the fair sampling assumption is that the loss is independent of the measurement settings, so the ensemble of detected systems provides a fair statistical sample of the total ensemble. This is often assumed to be needed to interpret Bell inequality experiments as ruling out hidden-variable theories. Here we show that it is not necessary; the loss can depend on measurement settings, provided the detection efficiency factorises…
