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Cambridge University Press eBooks

Bell's Theorem without Inequalities: On the Inception and Scope of the GHZ Theorem

Olival Freire, Osvaldo Frota Pessoa Junior

Published Aug 31, 2016• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

Introduction Since its inception, fifty years ago, Bell's theorem has had a long history not only of experimental tests but also of theoretical developments. Studying pairs of correlated quantummechanical particles separated in space, in a composite “entangled” state, Bell [1] showed that the joint ascription of hidden variables and locality to the system led to an inequality that is violated by the predictions of quantum mechanics. Fifteen years later, experiments confirmed the predictions of quantum mechanics, ruling out a large class of local realist theories. One of the most meaningful theoretical developments that followed Bell's work was the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) theorem, also known as Bell's theorem without inequalities. In 1989, the American physicists Daniel Greenberger and Michael Horne, who had been working on Bell's theorem since the late 1960s, together with the Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger, introduced a novelty into the testing of entanglement, extending Bell's theorem in a different and interesting direction. According to Franck Laloë [2], For many years, everyone thought that Bell had basically exhausted the subject by considering all really interesting situations, and that two-spin systems provided the most spectacular quantum violations of local realism. It therefore came as a surprise to many when in 1989 Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger (GHZ) showed that systems containing more than two correlated particles may actually exhibit even more dramatic violations of local realism. The trio analyzed the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen 1935 argument once again and were able to write what are now called Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled states, involving three or four correlated spin-1/2 particles, leading to conflicts between local realist theories and quantum mechanics. However, unlike Bell's theorem, the conflict now was not of a statistical nature, as was the case with Bell's theorem, insofar as measurements on a single GHZ state could lead to conflicting predictions with local realistic models [3–5]. In this paper we present the history of the creation of this theorem and analyze its scope.

DOI
10.1017/cbo9781316219393.010

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Introduction Since its inception, fifty years ago, Bell's theorem has had a long history not only of experimental tests but also of theoretical developments. Studying pairs of correlated quantummechanical particles separated in space, in a composite “entangled” state, Bell [1] showed that the joint ascription of hidden variables and locality to the system led to an inequality that is violated by the predictions of quantum mechanics. Fifteen years later, experiments confirmed the predictions of quantum mechanics, ruling out a large class of local realist theories. One of the most meaningful theoretical developments that followed Bell's work was the Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) theorem, also known as Bell's theorem without inequalities. In 1989, the American physicists Daniel Greenberger and Michael Horne, who had been working on Bell's theorem since the late 1960s, together with the Austrian physicist Anton Zeilinger, introduced a novelty into the testing of entanglement, extending Bell's theorem in a different and interesting direction. According to Franck Laloë [2], For many years, everyone thought that Bell had basically exhausted the subject by considering all really interesting situations, and that two-spin systems provided the most spectacular quantum violations of local realism. It therefore came as a surprise to many when in 1989 Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger (GHZ) showed that systems containing more than two correlated particles may actually exhibit even more dramatic violations of local realism. The trio analyzed the Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen 1935 argument once again and were able to write what are now called Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) entangled states, involving three or four correlated spin-1/2 particles, leading to conflicts between local realist theories and quantum mechanics. However, unlike Bell's theorem, the conflict now was not of a statistical nature, as was the case with Bell's theorem, insofar as measurements on a single GHZ state could lead to conflicting predictions with local realistic models [3–5]. In this paper we present the history of the creation of this theorem and analyze its scope.
Bell's theorem revealed that a local hidden-variable model cannot completely reproduce the quantum mechanical predictions. Bell's inequality provides an upper bound under the locality and reality assumptions that can be violated by correlated measurement statistics of quantum mechanics. Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger (GHZ) gave a more compelling proof of Bell's theorem without inequalities by considering perfect correlations rather than statistical correlations. This work presents a temporal analog of the GHZ argument that establishes Bell's theorem in time without inequalities.
Abstract Bell's theorem revealed that a local hidden-variable model cannot completely reproduce the quantum mechanical predictions. Bell's inequality provides an upper bound under the locality and reality assumptions that can be violated by correlated measurement statistics of quantum mechanics. Greenberger, Horne, and Zeilinger (GHZ) gave a more compelling proof of Bell's theorem without inequalities by considering perfect correlations rather than statistical correlations. In this work, we present a temporal analogue of GHZ argument that establishes Bell's theorem in time without inequalities .
J.S. Bell's remarkable 1964 theorem showed that any theory sharing the empirical predictions of orthodox quantum mechanics would have to exhibit a surprising – and, from the point of view of relativity theory, very troubling – kind of nonlocality. Unfortunately, even still on this 50th anniversary, many commentators and textbook authors continue to misrepresent Bell's theorem. In particular, one continues to hear the claim that Bell's result leaves open the option of concluding either nonlocality or the failure of some unorthodox “hidden variable” (or “determinism” or “realism”) premise. This mistaken claim is often based on a failure to appreciate the role of the earlier 1935 argument of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen in Bell's reasoning. After briefly reviewing this situation, I turn to two alternative versions of quantum theory – the “many worlds” theory of Everett and the quantum Bayesian interpretation of Fuchs, Schack, Caves, and Mermin – that purport to provide actual counterexamples to Bell's claim that nonlocality is required to account for the empirically verified quantum predictions. After analyzing each theory's grounds for claiming to explain the EPR–Bell correlations locally, however, one can see that (despite a number of fundamental differences) the two theories share a common for-all-practical-purposes (FAPP) solipsistic character. This dramatically undermines such theories’ claims to provide a local explanation of the correlations and thus, by concretizing the ridiculous philosophical lengths to which one must go to elude Bell's own conclusion, reinforces the assertion that nonlocality really is required to coherently explain the empirical data. Introduction Fifty years ago, in 1964 [1], John Stewart Bell first proved the theorem that has become widely known as “Bell's Theorem” but that Bell himself instead referred to as the “locality inequality theorem” [2]. In Bell's own view, the theorem showed that the empirical predictions of local theories will be constrained by Bell's inequality (or as Bell himself preferred to call it, the “locality inequality”). Hence, nonlocality is a necessary feature of any theory that shares the empirical predictions of standard quantum mechanics.
Bell inequalities were formulated by John Bell to test the possible violation of local realistic theories by quantum mechanical systems. It was shown that entangled quantu-m states of multiple particles violate various Bell’s inequalities. This proved that quan-tum mechanics allows correlations between spatially separated systems that have no classical analogue. The main focus of this work is to investigate genuine multiqubit non-locality in families of entangled 3 and 4-qubit pure states by studying a Bell-type inequality that is violated only if all qubits are non-locally correlated. We numerically study the relationship between entanglement and violation of the Svetlichny Bell-type inequality. We analyze non-local correlations in 3-qubit generalized Greenberger-Hor-ne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, maximal slice (MS) states, and W states. Our studies show that the correlations exhibited by three particles cannot in general be described by hid-den variable theories with at most two-particle non-locality. However, some 3-qubit entangled states do not violate the Svetlichny’s inequality. We then extend our analysis to 4-qubit generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states, maximal slice (MS) states, and W states. The results are similar to the 3-qubit case for GHZ and MS states. The range of parameters for which we see a violation is the same for the 3 and 4-qubit GHZ states. However, the 4-qubit W states do not violate Bell-type inequality, unlike the 3-qubit W states. Our results show the complex nature of multiqubit entang-lement and non-locality and provide tools for designing useful quantum communica-tion tasks.
In this work we look for novel classes of Bell's inequalities and methods to produce them. We also find their quantum violations including, if possible, the maximum one. The Jordan bases method that we explain in Chapter 2 is about using a pair of certain type of orthonormal bases whose spans are subspaces related to measurement outcomes of incompatible quantities on the same physical system. Jordan vectors are the briefest way of expressing the relative orientation of any two subspaces. This feature helps us to reduce the dimensionality of the parameter space on which we do searches for optimization. The work is published in [24]. In Chapter 3, we attempt to find a connection between group theory and Bell's theorem. We devise a way of generating terms of a Bell's inequality that are related to elements of an algebraic group. The same group generates both the terms of the Bell's inequality and the observables that are used to calculate the quantum value of the Bell expression. Our results are published in [25][26]. In brief, Bell's theorem is the main tool of a research program that was started by Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen [19] and Bohr [8] in the early days of quantum mechanics in their discussions about the core nature of physical systems. These debates were about a novel type of physical states called superposition states, which are introduced by quantum mechanics and manifested in the apparent inevitable randomness in measurement outcomes of identically prepared systems. Bell's huge contribution was to find a means of quantifying the problem and hence of opening the way to experimental verification by rephrasing the questions as limits on certain combinations of correlations between measurement results of spatially separate systems [7]. Thanks to Bell, the fundamental questions related to the nature of quantum mechanical systems became quantifiable [6]. According to Bell's theorem, some correlations between quantum entangled systems that involve incompatible quantities are not allowed by classical mechanics, a feature that is called as "quantum nonlocality". An experimental observation of those correlations, in other words, a violation of the limits imposed by classical physics, implies the correctness of quantum description and invalidates the classical, local realistic models. The first Bell experiments were proposed by Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt, who invented the most famous Bell's inequality [13]. Later, the Aspect experiments were satisfactory enough for the physics community to be conclusive about the validation of quantum mechanics [1][3][4][2]. Ekert's work on applications of quantum nonlocality to communication resulted in the new field of quantum communication and cryptography, and turned the research program into a practical one [20]. Pitowsky showed a method to find all expressions of limitations due to local realism, all Bell's inequalities, for a given physical scenario. He also proved that the problem is, unfortunately, NP-complete and hence as the scenarios get more complex, they also become computationally intractable [33][34]. Therefore, different methods for the solution of special cases of the problem are necessary. Inequalities found for those special cases can be called classes of Bell's inequalities. For example, Werner and Wolf [41] and Collins, Gisin, Linden, Massar, and Popescu [16] found classes that cover a wide range of scenarios. Our work is a similar kind of effort to produce and study new types of Bell's inequalities.