New types of Bell inequalities and new versions of the Bell theorem will be presented here. They lead to stronger constraints for local realistic theories than the standard inequalities. It will be shown that the fact that such inequalities can be violated indicates not only that we have to abandon classical concepts, but is also a direct indication that quantum states which lead to such violations can, without any further processing, like distillation, etc., be applied to perform tasks with efficiency unattainable for classical systems. Misinterpretations of Bell theorem will be discussed. On one hand, the root of some erroneous claims that there exists a local realistic model for EPR-Bell correlations will be exposed. On the other hand, over-interpretations using vague terms like quantum non-locality or just non-locality will be criticized.
New types of Bell inequalities and new versions of the Bell theorem will be presented here. They lead to stronger constraints for local realistic theories than the standard inequalities. It will be shown that the fact that such inequalities can be violated indicates not only that we have to abandon classical concepts, but is also a direct indication that quantum states which lead to such violations can, without any further processing, like distillation, etc., be applied to perform tasks with efficiency unattainable for classical systems. Misinterpretations of Bell theorem will be discussed. On one hand, the root of some erroneous claims that there exists a local realistic model for EPR-Bell correlations will be exposed. On the other hand, over-interpretations using vague terms like quantum non-locality or just non-locality will be criticized.
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.
It is one of the most remarkable features of quantum physics that measurements on spatially separated systems cannot always be described by a locally causal theory. In such a theory, the outcomes of local measurements are determined in advance solely by some unknown (or hidden) variables and the choice of local measurements. Correlations that are allowed within the framework of a locally causal theory are termed classical. Typically, the fact that quantum mechanics does not always result in classical correlations is revealed by the violation of Bell inequalities, which are constraints that have to be satisfied by any classical correlations. It has been known for a long time that entanglement is necessary to demonstrate nonclassical correlations, and hence a Bell inequality violation. However, since some entangled quantum states are known to admit explicit locally causal models, the exact role of entanglement in Bell inequality violation has remained obscure. This thesis provides both a comprehensive review on these issues as well as a report on new discoveries made to clarify the relationship between entanglement and Bell inequality violation. In particular, within the framework of a standard Bell experiment, i.e., a Bell inequality test that is directly performed on a single copy of a quantum state r, we have derived two algorithms to determine, respectively, a lower bound and an upper bound on the strength of correlations that r can offer for any given Bell inequality. Both of these algorithms make use convex optimization techniques in the form of a semidefinite program. By examples, we show that these algorithms can often be used in tandem, in conjunction with convexity arguments, to determine if a quantum state can offer nonclassical correlations and hence violates a given Bell inequality. On the other hand, since a standard Bell experiment typically involves measurements over many copies of the quantum systems, we have also investigated the possibility of enhancing the strength of nonclassical correlation by, instead, performing collective measurements on multiple copies of the quantum systems. Our findings show that even without postselection, such joint measurements may also lead to stronger nonclassical correlations, and hence a better Bell inequality violation. Meanwhile, previous studies have indicated that entangled state admitting locally causal models may still lead to observable nonclassical correlations if, prior to a standard Bell experiment, the state is subjected to some appropriate local preprocessing. This phenomenon of hidden nonlocality was discovered more than a decade ago, but to date, it is still not known if all entangled states can demonstrate nonclassical correlations through these more sophisticated Bell experiments. A key result in this thesis then consists of showing that for all bipartite entangled states, observable nonclassical correlations, in the form of a Bell-CHSH inequality violation, can indeed be derived if we allow both local preprocessing and the usage of shared ancillary state which by itself does not violate the Bell-CHSH inequality. This establishes a kind of equivalence between bipartite entanglement and states that cannot be simulated by classical correlations. In summary, for a standard Bell experiment where no local preprocessing on a quantum state r is allowed, we have provided two algorithms that can be used in tandem to determine if r can be simulated by a locally causal theory, whereas in the scenario where local preprocessing is allowed, we have demonstrated that bipartite entangled states are precisely those which cannot always be simulated classically.
Bell's theorem is 50 years old. Still there is a controversy about its implications. Much of it has its roots in confusion regarding the premises from which the theorem can be derived. Some claim that a derivation of Bell's inequalities requires just locality assumption, and nothing more. Violations of the inequalities are then interpreted as ``nonlocality'' or ``quantum nonlocality''. We show that such claims are unfounded and that every derivation of Bell's inequalities requires a premise -- in addition to locality and freedom of choice -- which is either assumed tacitly, or unconsciously, or is embedded in a single compound condition (like Bell's ``local causality''). The premise is equivalent to the assumption of existence of additional variables which do not appear in the quantum formalism (in form of determinism, or joint probability for outcomes of all conceivable measurements, or ``additional causes`'', or ``hidden variables'', ``complete description of the state'' or counterfactual definiteness, etc.). A certain irony is that perhaps the main message of violation of Bell's inequalities is that our notion of locality should be based on an operationally well-defined no-signalling condition, rather than on local causality.
Abstract One of the Bell’s assumptions in the original derivation of his inequalities was the hypothesis of locality, i.e., the absence of the influence of two remote measuring instruments on one another. That is why violations of these inequalities observed in experiments are often interpreted as a manifestation of the nonlocal nature of quantum mechanics, or a refutation of a local realism. It is well known that the Bell’s inequality was derived in its traditional form, without resorting to the hypothesis of locality and without the introduction of hidden variables, the only assumption being that the probability distributions are nonnegative. This can therefore be regarded as a rigorous proof that the hypothesis of locality and the hypothesis of existence of the hidden variables not relevant to violations of Bell’s inequalities. The physical meaning of the obtained results is examined. Physical nature of the violation of the Bell inequalities is explained under new EPR-B nonlocality postulate. We show that the correlations of the observables involved in the Bohm–Bell type experiments can be expressed as correlations of classical random variables. The revisited Bell type inequality in canonical notatons reads 〈AB〉 + 〈A’B〉 + 〈AB’〉 − 〈A’B’〉 ⩽ 6.
It is widely accepted that the violation of Bell inequalities excludes local theories of the quantum realm. This paper presents a stronger Bell argument which even forbids certain non-local theories. Among these excluded non-local theories are those whose only non-local connection is a probabilistic (or functional) dependence between the space-like separated measurement outcomes of EPR/B experiments (a subset of outcome dependent theories). In this way, the new argument shows that the result of the received Bell argument, which requires just any kind of non-locality, is inappropriately weak. Positively, the remaining non-local theories, which can violate Bell inequalities (among them quantum theory), are characterized by the fact that at least one of the measurement outcomes in some sense probabilistically depends both on its local as well as on its distant measurement setting (probabilistic Bell contextuality). Whether an additional dependence between the outcomes holds, is irrelevant for the question whether a certain theory can violate Bell inequalities. This new concept of quantum non-locality is considerably tighter and more informative than the one following from the usual Bell argument. We prove that (given usual background assumptions) the result of the stronger Bell argument presented here is the strongest possible consequence from the violation of Bell inequalities on a qualitative probabilistic level.
Bell's theorem is an important milestone in the development of quantum mechanics. It draws a line between concepts such as realism and locality on the one hand and quantum mechanics on the other. Experimentally veried violations of Bell inequalities can yield important information about what assumptions can be made about physical reality. Experiments have been conducted for over 40 years, but have left loopholes open in their executions. It is of great interest to close these loopholes, and in order to do so, further experiments are needed. The objective of this project is to investigate the underlying, previous work in the eld and to formulate a proposal for a new experiment. To do this, the derivations of the original Bell inequality and the CHSH inequality are presented along with previously conducted experiments. Also presented is the EPR paradox from which sprung the original Bell inequality.