Bell's Theorem -- Early formulation and experimental tests:

John F. Clauser

John F. Clauser

John F. Clauser, Abner Shimony

Bell's theorem represents a significant advance in understanding the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics. The theorem shows that essentially all local theories of natural phenomena that are formulated within the framework of realism may be tested using a single experimental arrangement. Moreover, the predictions by those theories must significantly differ from those by quantum mechanics. Experimental results evidently refute the theorem's predictions for these theories and favour those of quantum mechanics. The conclusions are philosophically startling: either one must totally abandon the realistic philosophy of most working scientists, or dramatically revise out concept of space-time.

Kaj Börge Hansen, Filosofiska föreningen

Andreas Winter

The possibility of experimentally testing the Bell–Kochen–Specker theorem is investigated critically, following the demonstrations by Meyer, Kent, and Clifton–Kent that the predictions of quantum mechanics are indistinguishable (up to arbitrary precision) from those of a non-contextual model, and the subsequent debate about the extent to which these models are actually classical or non-contextual. The present analysis starts from a careful consideration of these 'finite-precision' approximations. A stronger condition for non-contextual models, dubbed ontological faithfulness , is exhibited. It is shown that this allows us to approximately formulate the constraints in Bell–Kochen–Specker theorems, such as to render the usual proofs robust. Consequently, one can experimentally test to finite precision ontologically faithful non-contextuality, and thus experimentally refute explanations from this smaller class. We include a discussion of the relation of ontological faithfulness to other proposals to overcome the finite precision objection. This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical devoted to '50 years of Bell's theorem'.

Sheldon Goldstein, Travis Norsen, Daniel V. Tausk +1 more