An experiment for detection of empty waves

S. Jeffers, J. Sloan

R. Folman, Z. Vager

F. Selleri

N. M. Chase

Antoine Suárez

I discuss an experiment demonstrating nonlocality and conservation of energy under the assumption that the decision of the outcome happens at detection. The experiment does not require Bell's inequalities and is loophole-free. I further argue that the local hidden variables assumed in Bell's theorem involve de Broglie's "empty waves", and therefore "many worlds" achieves to reconcile locality with the violation of Bell's inequalities. Accordingly, the discussed experiment may be the first loophole-free demonstration of nonlocality.

X. Y. Zou, T. Grayson, L. J. Wang +1 more

The de Broglie pilot wave theory is a hybrid of quantum and classical concepts that was introduced in order to avoid the conceptual difficulties of the Copenhagen interpretation. According to some versions of this theory, there exist both photons and electromagnetic waves, and the waves are supposed not only to yield probabilities for the photons, but also to have a physical reality. Even an ″empty″ wave, which cannot give rise to photoelectric detection, is supposed to be capable of inducing observable effects. We have tested this theory in an experiment with two cascaded parametric down-converter crystals, in which the idler beam from the first crystal has been shown to induce coherence between the signal beams from the two crystals without inducing any emission. When the photon is removed from the first idler with the help of a beam splitter, the remaining empty wave is found not to induce coherence.