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arXiv:1706.05001 · Physical review. D/Physical review. D.

Obstructions to Bell CMB experiments

Jérôme Martin, Vincent Vennin

Published Sep 6, 2017• 81 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a general and systematic study of how a Bell experiment on the cosmic microwave background could be carried out. We introduce different classes of pseudo-spin operators and show that, if the system is placed in a two-mode squeezed state as inflation predicts, they all lead to a violation of the Bell inequality. However, we also discuss the obstacles that one faces in order to realize this program in practice and show that they are probably insurmountable. We suggest alternative methods that could reveal the quantum origin of cosmological structures without relying on Bell experiments.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.96.063501

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We present a general and systematic study of how a Bell experiment on the cosmic microwave background could be carried out. We introduce different classes of pseudo-spin operators and show that, if the system is placed in a two-mode squeezed state as inflation predicts, they all lead to a violation of the Bell inequality. However, we also discuss the obstacles that one faces in order to realize this program in practice and show that they are probably insurmountable. We suggest alternative methods that could reveal the quantum origin of cosmological structures without relying on Bell experiments.
The primordial fluctuations during inflation are widely believed to seed the Large Scale Structure of the universe. However, it remains unknown whether these fluctuations have a quantum nature. According to the inflation theory, the expanding universe creates particle pairs, which are entangled in their momenta due to momentum conservation. Therefore, cosmological Bell inequalities are well motivated and can be formulated using pseudo-spin operators, constructed from operators involving the momenta of the fluctuations. The violation of these Bell inequalities indicates the quantum nature of primordial fluctuations. However, the cosmological Bell test faces several obstructions, including decoherence and the fast-decaying momenta. We thus study the Bell test on scalar modes and tensor modes with decoherence from the interactions of cosmological perturbations, including the bulk and boundary interaction terms. We explore the possibility of extracting the information of the decoherence rate and the structure of primordial interactions from the Bell test. We also discuss the possibility of constructing Bell tests for the entanglement between polarizations, which may avoid the fast-decaying momenta problem and be another way, besides the tabletop experiments and large gravitational waves detectors, to test the quantum nature of gravity.
Inspired the low ℓ\ellℓ cosmic variance we present a study on the statistical variance expected in observing Bell's inequality violation by primordial quantum states violation. We consider the statistical variance inherent to three sets of pseudo-spin operators used to construct Bell's inequality. We find that for a highly squeezed state, such as the relevant CMB states, the statistical variation will vanish and does not contribute to theoretical uncertainties.
According to the theory of cosmic inflation, the large scale structures observed in our Universe (galaxies, clusters of galaxies, Cosmic Background Microwave—CMB—anisotropy…) are of quantum mechanical origin. They are nothing but vacuum fluctuations, stretched to cosmological scales by the cosmic expansion and amplified by gravitational instability. At the end of inflation, these perturbations are placed in a two-mode squeezed state with the strongest squeezing ever produced in Nature (much larger than anything that can be made in the laboratory on Earth). This article studies whether astrophysical observations could unambiguously reveal this quantum origin by borrowing ideas from quantum information theory. It is argued that some of the tools needed to carry out this task have been discussed long ago by J. Bell in a, so far, largely unrecognized contribution. A detailled study of his paper and of the criticisms that have been put forward against his work is presented. Although J. Bell could not have realized it when he wrote his letter since the quantum state of cosmological perturbations was not yet fully characterized at that time, it is also shown that Cosmology and cosmic inflation represent the most interesting frameworks to apply the concepts he investigated. This confirms that cosmic inflation is not only a successful paradigm to understand the early Universe. It is also the only situation in Physics where one crucially needs General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics to derive the predictions of a theory and, where, at the same time, we have high-accuracy data to test these predictions, making inflation a playground of utmost importance to discuss foundational issues in Quantum Mechanics.
One of the cornerstones of inflationary cosmology is that primordial density fluctuations have a quantum mechanical origin. However, most physicists consider that such quantum mechanical effects disappear in CMB data due to decoherence. In this conference report, we show that the violation of Bell inequalities in an initial state of our universe increases exponentially with the number of modes to measure in inflation. This indicates that some evidence that our universe has a quantum mechanical origin may survive in CMB data, even if quantum entanglement decays exponentially afterward due to decoherence.
Abstract In a recent paper [R. Dale. R. Lapiedra, and J. A. Morales-Lladosa, Phys. Rev. D 107 (2023) 023506] a cosmic-like Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality was proved for the temperature fluctuations δT of the perturbed Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), assuming local realism. This inequality can be tested from observational data. In fact, no violation for it has been found from the CMB data provided by the COBE satellite in different sky directions. This is a result which, being negative, is not conclusive in relation to the possible violation of the CHSH inequality in a cosmological context. So, the preceding analysis needs to be extended by using more precise current CMB data, like those provided by WMAP and Planck satellites. This is a task of considerable importance but, technically, much more involved in data treatments. In the present, assuming again local realism behind measurements and observational data, this extension is accomplished. The result is that a sound violation of the CHSH inequality is found, which would mean the failure of the assumed local realism in accordance with the quantum origin of the primordial temperature fluctuations in the framework of standard inflation and the orthodox interpretation of the Quantum Mechanics.
We propose a practical scheme to use photons from causally disconnected cosmic sources to set the detectors in an experimental test of Bell's inequality. In current experiments, with settings determined by quantum random number generators, only a small amount of correlation between detector settings and local hidden variables, established less than a millisecond before each experiment, would suffice to mimic the predictions of quantum mechanics. By setting the detectors using pairs of quasars or patches of the cosmic microwave background, observed violations of Bell's inequality would require any such coordination to have existed for billions of years-an improvement of 20 orders of magnitude.