Vacuum Texture: A New Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and a New Loophole for Bell's Inequality Measurements that preserves Local Realism and Causality
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 vacuum texture interpretation of quantum mechanics in a Bell's inequality experiment, the states of the pair of particles created at the source (e.g. during parametric down conversion) is influenced by an inhomogeneous vacuum texture sent from the measurement apparatus. We will also show that the resulting pair of particles are not entangled and that the theory of vacuum texture preserves local realism with complete causality. This article will also suggest an experiment to definitively confirm the existence of vacuum texture.
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 vacuum texture interpretation of quantum mechanics in a Bell's inequality experiment, the states of the pair of particles created at the source (e.g. during parametric down conversion) is influenced by an inhomogeneous vacuum texture sent from the measurement apparatus. We will also show that the resulting pair of particles are not entangled and that the theory of vacuum texture preserves local realism with complete causality. This article will also suggest an experiment to definitively confirm the existence of vacuum texture.
In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR) argued that (then new) quantum mechanics was incomplete. At the heart of EPR’s paradox was the strange non-local nature of an entangled state which allowed EPR to simultaneously assign local values for position and momentum of a particle. In 1964, John Bell proposed an inequality (Bell’s inequality) that must be satisfied by any local realistic theory. The experimental confirmation of quantum physics, i.e., the experimental test of Bell’s inequality, required a pair of particles in an entangled state. The experiments first performed in the early 1970s, followed by a series of experiments until now, have confirmed the violation of Bell’s inequality, strongly implying that local realistic descriptions of nature are not consistent with experimental observations. The early simplistic view of entanglement has now been significantly expanded to include mixed states and multiple particles. Moreover, theoretical and experimental studies on the nature of entanglement have led to quantum information science where entanglement is an essential resource. In this article, we briefly review the early experiments on Bell’s inequality and experimental attempts to close “loopholes” as well as some key experiments on quantum information.
Most physicists agree that the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen–Bell paradox exemplifies much of the strange behavior of quantum mechanics, but argument persists about what assumptions underlie the paradox. To clarify what the debate is about, we employ a simple and well-known thought experiment involving two correlated photons to help us focus on the logical assumptions needed to construct the EPR and Bell arguments. The view presented in this paper is that the minimal assumptions behind Bell’s inequality are locality and counterfactual definiteness but not scientific realism, determinism, or hidden variables as are often suggested. We further examine the resulting constraints on physical theory with an illustration from the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics—an interpretation that we argue is deterministic, local, and realist but that nonetheless violates the Bell inequality.
An overview of the history of Bell’s inequality is given, beginning with the so-called EPR paradox originally put forward by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen and the impossibility proof of von Neumann. Bell’s inequality, which ultimately shifted the discussion from arguments based on philosophically introduced postulates to the domain of experimental physics, is presented together with experimental attempts from the early 1970s to 2010s to violate this inequality. We introduce three historical loopholes in the experimental schemes which have prevented experimentalists from being able to fully disprove the possibility of a hidden-variables description of nature. Recent experimental data indicate that all the main loopholes are now closed for photons (albeit not simultaneously in one experiment). Besides the class of stochastic local realism that have been tested experimentally, some other possible classical interpretations are mentioned.
Abstract This chapter presents a detailed discussion of Bell inequalities and their experimental tests. Starting from the Aharonov-Bohm version of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, we review EPR’s criteria for realism and completeness and Bell’s locality condition, before deriving the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. This is followed by an exposition on Bell’s original inequality and other Bell inequalities by Wigner, as well as Clauser and Horne. We then discuss the milestones in the experimental violation of Bell inequalities, from the experiment of Freedman and Clauser in the 1970s, to the efforts of Aspect et al. in the 1980s, the experiments by the teams of Zeilinger and Gisin in the 1990s, and culminating the loophole-free tests in 2015. Finally we turn to a brief discussion of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, focusing on contrasting the realist views held by, e.g., Einstein and Bell, and the informational views with proponents such as Brukner and Zeilinger
"In 1935, Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen questioned whether quantum mechanics can be complete, as it seemingly does not adhere to a natural view of reality: local realism, which is the notion that an event can only be influenced by events in the past lightcone, and can only influence events in the future lightcone. This question sparked a philosophical debate that lasted for three decades, until John Bell demonstrated that not only are quantum mechanics and local realism philosophically incompatible, but they predict different statistical results for an appropriate set of measurements on entangled particles, which changed the debate to a scientific discussion. Since then, Bell inequality violations have occurred in a plethora of systems, hinting that local realism is indeed wrong. However, every experiment had imperfections that complicated the interpretation --- the experiments had so-called ""loopholes"" which allowed local realism to persist. In this manuscript, we present our work in using optimized sources of entangled photons to perform the long-sought loophole-free Bell test. This landmark experiment invalidates local realism to the best that science will allow. Beyond answering questions on reality, these Bell tests have a important application in generating provably-secure private random numbers, which then can be used as a seed for cryptographic applications. Not only do we demonstrate that nonlocality must exist, but we begin an experimental exploration in an attempt to understand and quantify this nonlocality. We do so by considering all theories that obey no-signaling (or relativistic causality). In our experiments, we observe the counter-intuitive feature of measuring more nonlocality with less entangled states. We also place a bound on the predictive power of any theory that obeys relativistic causality. And finally, we are able to measure quantum correlations only attainable through complex qubits. This work merely begins to probe the quantum boundary, beginning a journey that may someday find evidence of a beyond-quantum theory."
Quantum physics violates the basic assumptions of local realism. Particles can be entangled with each other in ways that allow correlations stronger than possible in classical physics. This was first realized by Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) in 1935 and led them to conclude that quantum theory was incomplete. It took about 30 years before J. S. Bell found observable consequences of this phenomenon by showing how entangled states violate inequalities for two-particle correlations derived purely from the assumption that the world obeys local realism. Violations of Bell inequalities were first observed experimentally in the Aspect experiment, which will be discussed below. Such experiments are technically challenging and care is needed to avoid any loopholes in the experimental setup that would still permit the description of the experiments by a local realistic theory. Bell inequalities describe violations of local realism on average, meaning that each individual experimental outcome could occur in a local realistic theory. It is the statistics of these outcomes that violates local realism. In contrast, another class of quantum states, so-called Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) states, which contain three particles, can be shown to violate local realism in each measurement outcome. We will also discuss this class of states and experiments by Zeilinger's group, which demonstrated this type of violation of local realism for the first time. Our aim here is not to discuss the exact relations between quantum entanglement, non-locality and realism, and their physical and philosophical implications. While this is a highly interesting topic which attracts a lot of attention from researchers, such an exploration would go beyond the scope of this book.