Incompleteness in the Bell Theorem Involving All Settings of Measuring Apparatus

In general, Albert Einstein as one of "the founding fathers of quantum mechanics" had some problems to accept especially the Copenhagen dominated interpretation of quantum mechanics. Einstein's dissatisfaction with Copenhagen's interpretation of quantum mechanics, the absence of locality and causality within the Copenhagen dominated quantum mechanics lead to the well known Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen thought experiment. According to Einstein et al., the Copenhagen dominated quantum mechanics cannot be regarded as a complete physical theory. The Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen thought experiment was the origin of J. S. Bell's publication in 1964; known as Bell's theorem. Meanwhile, some dramatic violations of Bell's inequality (by so called Bell test experiments) have been reported which is taken as an empirical evidence against local realism and causality at quantum level and as positive evidence in favor of the Copenhagen dominated quantum mechanics. Thus far, Quantum mechanics is still regarded as a "strictly" non-local theory. The purpose of this publication is to refute Bell's original theorem. Thus far, if we accept Bell's theorem as correct, we must accept that +0> = +1. We can derive a logical contradiction out of Bell's theorem, Bell's theorem is refuted.

For a system composed of two particles Bell's theorem asserts that averages of physical quantities determined from local variables must conform to a family of inequalities. In this work we show that a classical model containing a local probabilistic interaction in the measurement process can lead to a violation of the Bell inequalities. We first introduce two-particle phase-space distributions in classical mechanics constructed to be the analogs of quantum mechanical angular momentum eigenstates. These distributions are then employed in four schemes characterized by different types of detectors measuring the angular momenta. When the model includes an interaction between the detector and the measured particle leading to ensemble dependencies, the relevant Bell inequalities are violated if total angular momentum is required to be conserved. The violation is explained by identifying assumptions made in the derivation of Bell's theorem that are not fulfilled by the model. These assumptions will be argued to be too restrictive to see in the violation of the Bell inequalities a faithful signature of nonlocality.

In the last couple of years many important results have been derived showing that Bell's inequalities are nothing else but the indicator of whether certain events and their probabilities can be represented within a Kolmogorovian probabilistic model. It has become evident that one can derive Bell's inequalities without mentioning locality, causality, hidden variables, etc. Many authors jumped to the conclusion that the original content of Bell's theorem had lost its meaning. I reconsider the original problem posed by Bell and I show that Bell's theorem is still valid.

Strict hierarchy among Bell Theorems

Hardy's nonlocality proof is considered as "the best version of Bell's theorem". We report an experimental implementation of this by measuring the orbital angular momentum (OAM) of entangled twisted photon pairs. Two advantages arise from using twisted photons. First, the limited OAM spectrum generated by parametric down-conversion provides a natural set of OAM non-maximally entangled states with selective degrees of entanglement. Second, the measurement of any non-trivial superposition of OAM states can be conveniently done with spatial light modulators. We measure states that are defined on asymmetric OAM Bloch spheres and show results which are incompatible with local realism.

Bell's Theorem is proved for locality and conservation formulated in terms of subjunctive conditionals with chance consequents, rather than the usual conditional probability formulation. This brings into sharp focus the minimal counterfactual assumptions needed for Bell's theorem.

Bell's Theorem assumes that hidden variables are not influenced by future measurement settings. The assumption has sometimes been questioned, but the suggestion has been thought outlandish, even by the taxed standards of the discipline. (Bell thought that it led to fatalism.) The case for this reaction turns out to be surprisingly weak, however. We show that QM easily evades the standard objections to advanced action. And the approach has striking advantages, especially in avoiding the apparent conflict between Bell's Theorem and special relativity. The second part of the paper considers the broader question as to why advanced action seems so counterintuitive. We investigate the origins of our ordinary intuitions about causal asymmetry. It is argued that the view that the past does not depend on the future is largely anthropocentric, a kind of projection of our own temporal asymmetry. Many physicists have also reached this conclusion, but have thought that if causation has no objective direction, there is no objective content to an advanced action interpretation of QM. This turns out to be a mistake. From the ordinary subjective perspective, we can distinguish two sorts of objective world: one "looks as if" it contains only forward causation, the other ``looks as if'' it involves a mix of backward and forward causation. This clarifies the objective core of an advanced action interpretation of QM, and shows that there is an independent symmetry argument in favour of the approach.

Formalizing the separability condition in Bell's theorem

The characterization of quantum correlations in terms of information-theoretic resource has been a fruitful approach to understand the power of quantum correlations as a resource. While bipartite entanglement and Bell inequality violation in this setting have been extensively studied, relatively little is known about their multipartite counterpart. In this paper, we apply and adapt the recently proposed definitions of multipartite nonlocality (Bancal et al 2013 Phys. Rev. A 88 014102) to the three- and four-partite scenarios to gain new insight on the resource aspect of multipartite nonlocal quantum correlations. Specifically, we show that reproducing certain tripartite quantum correlations requires mixtures of classical resources—be it the ability to change the groupings or the time orderings of measurements. Thus, when seen from the perspective of biseparable one-way classical signaling resources, certain tripartite quantum correlations do not admit a definite causal order. In the four-partite scenario, we obtain a superset description of the set of biseparable correlations which can be produced by allowing two groups of bipartite non-signaling resources. Quantum violation of the resulting Bell-like inequalities is investigated. As a byproduct, we obtain some new examples of device-independent witnesses for genuine four-partite entanglement, and also device-independent witnesses that allow one to infer the structure of the underlying multipartite entanglement.This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical devoted to ‘50 years of Bell's theorem’.

Bell's Theorem rules out many potential reformulations of quantum mechanics, but within a generalized framework, it does not exclude all "locally-mediated" models. Such models describe the correlations between entangled particles as mediated by intermediate parameters which track the particle world-lines and respect Lorentz covariance. These locally-mediated models require the relaxation of an arrow-of-time assumption which is typically taken for granted. Specifically, some of the mediating parameters in these models must functionally depend on measurement settings in their future, i.e., on input parameters associated with later times. This option (often called "retrocausal") has been repeatedly pointed out in the literature, but the exploration of explicit locally-mediated toy-models capable of describing specific entanglement phenomena has begun only in the past decade. A brief survey of such models is included here. These models provide a continuous and consistent description of events associated with spacetime locations, with aspects that are solved "all-at-once" rather than unfolding from the past to the future. The tension between quantum mechanics and relativity which is usually associated with Bell's Theorem does not occur here. Unlike conventional quantum models, the number of parameters needed to specify the state of a system does not grow exponentially with the number of entangled particles. The promise of generalizing such models to account for all quantum phenomena is identified as a grand challenge.

Technical aspects of a recently constructed strong version of Bell's theorem are discussed. The theorem assumes neither hidden variables nor factorization, and neither determinism nor counterfactual definiteness. It deals directly with logical connections. Hence its relationship with modal logic needs to be described. It is shown that the proof can be embedded in an orthodox modal logic, and hence its compatibility with modal logic assured, but that this embedding weakens the theorem by introducing as added assumptions the conventionalities of the particular modal logic that is adopted. This weakening is avoided in the recent proof by using directly the set-theoretic conditions entailed by the locality assumption.

We demonstrate that both Wigner's form of Bell's inequalities as well as a\nform of the second law of thermodynamics, as manifest in Carath\\'{e}odory's\nprinciple, can be derived from the same simple experimental and statistical\nmechanical assumptions combined with the trivial behavior of integers. This\nsuggests that Bell's theorem is merely a well-disguised statement of the second\nlaw. It also suggests that entanglement is necessary for quantum theory to be\nin full accord with the second law and thus builds on the results of Wiesniak,\nVedral, and Brukner \\cite{Marcin-Wiesniak:2008fv} who showed it was necessary\nfor consistency with the third law.\n

In this chapter we discuss the Einstein Podolsky Rosen theorem and its strong relation with Bell’s theorem. The central role played by the concept of beable introduced by Bell is emphasized. In particular we stress that beables involved in EPR and Bell theorems are not limited to hidden supplementary variables (e.g., like in the de Broglie-Bohm (dBB) pilot-wave theory) but also include the wave function. In full agreement with Bell this allows us the reformulate the EPR and Bell results as strong theorems concerning nonlocality for quantum mechanics itself and not only for hidden-variables approaches as it is often mistakenly assumed. Furthermore, we clarify some repeated ambiguities concerning ‘local-realism’ and emphasize that neither realism nor determinism nor counterfactual definiteness are prerequisites of EPR and Bell theorems.

Without abstract

An impossibility theorem for parameter independent hidden variable theories