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Physical Review A

Classical counterexamples to Bell’s inequalities

Yuri F. Orlov

Published Mar 18, 2002• 4 citations
Publisher

Abstract

This paper shows that a classical system containing a conventional yes/no decision-making component can behave like a quantum system of spin measurements in many ways (although it lacks a wave function) when, in principle, there are no deterministic decision procedures to govern the decision making, and when probabilistic decision procedures consistent with the system are introduced. Most notably, the system violates Bell's inequalities. Moreover, since the system is simple and macroscopic, its similarities to quantum systems arguably provide an insight into quantum mechanics and, in particular, EPR experiments. Thus, from the qualitative correspondences, $\mathrm{decisions}\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}\mathrm{quantum}$ measurements and the impossibility of deterministic decision $\mathrm{procedures}\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}\mathrm{quantum}$ noncommutativity, we conclude that the violation of Bell's inequalities in quantum mechanics does not require the existence of an unknown nonclassical nonlocality. It can merely be a result of local noncommutativity combined with nonlocalities of the classical type. The proposed classical decision-making system is a nonquantum theoretical construct possessing complementarity features in Bohr's sense.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.65.042106

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This paper shows that a classical system containing a conventional yes/no decision-making component can behave like a quantum system of spin measurements in many ways (although it lacks a wave function) when, in principle, there are no deterministic decision procedures to govern the decision making, and when probabilistic decision procedures consistent with the system are introduced. Most notably, the system violates Bell's inequalities. Moreover, since the system is simple and macroscopic, its similarities to quantum systems arguably provide an insight into quantum mechanics and, in particular, EPR experiments. Thus, from the qualitative correspondences, decisions\ensuremath↔quantum\mathrm{decisions}\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}\mathrm{quantum}decisions\ensuremath↔quantum measurements and the impossibility of deterministic decision procedures\ensuremath↔quantum\mathrm{procedures}\ensuremath{\leftrightarrow}\mathrm{quantum}procedures\ensuremath↔quantum noncommutativity, we conclude that the violation of Bell's inequalities in quantum mechanics does not require the existence of an unknown nonclassical nonlocality. It can merely be a result of local noncommutativity combined with nonlocalities of the classical type. The proposed classical decision-making system is a nonquantum theoretical construct possessing complementarity features in Bohr's sense.
It is shown that when properly analyzed using principles consistent with the use of a Hilbert space to describe microscopic properties, quantum mechanics is a local theory: one system cannot influence another system with which it does not interact. Claims to the contrary based on quantum violations of Bell inequalities are shown to be incorrect. A specific example traces a violation of the CHSH Bell inequality in the case of a spin-3/2 particle to the noncommutation of certain quantum operators in a situation where (non)locality is not an issue. A consistent histories analysis of what quantum measurements measure, in terms of quantum properties, is used to identify the basic problem with derivations of Bell inequalities: the use of classical concepts (hidden variables) rather than a probabilistic structure appropriate to the quantum domain. A difficulty with the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics is the use of a counterfactual argument which is not valid if one assumes that Hilbert-space quantum mechanics is complete; locality is not an issue. The quantum correlations that violate Bell inequalities can be understood using local quantum common causes. Wavefunction collapse and Schr\odinger steering are calculational procedures, not physical processes. A general Principle of Einstein Locality rules out nonlocal influences between noninteracting quantum systems. Some suggestions are made for changes in terminology that could clarify discussions of quantum foundations and be less confusing to students.
It is shown that when properly analyzed using principles consistent with the use of a Hilbert space to describe microscopic properties, quantum mechanics is a local theory: one system cannot influence another system with which it does not interact. Claims to the contrary based on quantum violations of Bell inequalities are argued to be incorrect. A specific example traces a violation of the CHSH Bell inequality in the case of a spin-3/2 particle to the noncommutation of certain quantum operators in a situation where (non)locality is not an issue. A consistent histories analysis of what quantum measurements measure, in terms of quantum properties, is used to identify the basic problem with derivations of Bell inequalities: the use of classical concepts (hidden variables) rather than a probabilistic structure appropriate to the quantum domain. A difficulty with the original Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics is the use of a counterfactual argument which is not valid if one assumes that Hilbert-space quantum mechanics is complete; locality is not an issue. The quantum correlations that violate Bell inequalities can be understood using local quantum common causes. Wave-function collapse and Schr\"odinger steering are calculational procedures, not physical processes. A general Principle of Einstein Locality rules out nonlocal influences between noninteracting quantum systems. Some suggestions are made for changes in terminology that could clarify discussions of quantum foundations and be less confusing to students.
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 the 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, in particular noncommutativity of single-particle measurements. We discuss to what extent a violation of these assumptions is a faithful marker of nonlocality.
In quantum mechanics, nonlocality (a violation of a Bell inequality) is intimately linked to complementarity, by which we mean that consistently assigning values to different observables at the same time is not possible. Nonlocality can only occur when some of the relevant observables do not commute, and this noncommutativity makes the observables complementary. Beyond quantum mechanics, the concept of complementarity can be formalized in several distinct ways. Here we describe some of these possible formalizations and ask how they relate to nonlocality. We partially answer this question by describing two toy theories which display nonlocality and obey the no-signaling principle, although each of them does not display a certain kind of complementarity. The first toy theory has the property that it maximally violates the Clauser, Horn, Shimony, and Holt (CHSH) inequality, although the corresponding local observables are pairwise jointly measurable. The second toy theory also maximally violates the CHSH inequality, although its state space is classical and all measurements are mutually nondisturbing: if a measurement sequence contains some measurement twice with any number of other measurements in between, then these two measurements give the same outcome with certainty.
Starting from the late 60's many experiments have been performed to verify the violation Bell's inequality by Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) type correlations. The idea of these experiments being that: (i) Bell's inequality is a consequence of locality, hence its experimental violation is an indication of non locality; (ii) this violation is a typical quantum phenomenon because any classical system making local choices (either deterministic or random) will produce correlations satisfying this inequality. Both statements (i) and (ii) have been criticized by quantum probability on theoretical grounds (not discussed in the present paper) and the experiment discussed below has been devised to support these theoretical arguments. We emphasize that the goal of our experiment is not to reproduce classically the EPR correlations but to prove that there exist perfectly local classical dynamical systems violating Bell's inequality.
This paper is aimed to dissociate nonlocality from quantum theory. We demonstrate that the tests on violation of the Bell type inequalities are simply statistical tests of local incompatibility of observables. In fact, these are tests on violation of the Bohr complementarity principle. Thus, the attempts to couple experimental violations of the Bell type inequalities with “quantum nonlocality” is really misleading. These violations are explained in the quantum theory as exhibitions of incompatibility of observables for a single quantum system, e.g., the spin projections for a single electron or the polarization projections for a single photon. Of course, one can go beyond quantum theory with the hidden variables models (as was suggested by Bell) and then discuss their possible nonlocal features. However, conventional quantum theory is local.