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Communications on Stochastic Analysis

Bell's inequality violations: relation with de Finetti's coherence principle and inferential analysis of experimental data

Franco Fagnola, Matteo Gregoratti

Published Mar 1, 2012• 1 citation
Publisher

Abstract

It is often believed that de Finetti's coherence principle naturally leads, in the finite case, to the Kolmogorov's probability theory of random phenomena, which then implies Bell's inequality.Thus, not only a violation of Bell's inequality looks paradoxical in the Kolmogorovian framework, but it should violate also de Finetti's coherence principle.Firstly, we show that this is not the case: the typical theoretical violations of Bell's inequality in quantum physics are in agreement with de Finetti's coherence principle.Secondly, we look for statistical evidence of such violations: we consider the experimental data of measurements of polarization of photons, performed to verify empirically violations of Bell's inequality, and, on the basis of the estimated violation, we test the null hypothesis of Kolmogorovianity for the observed phenomenon.By standard inferential techniques we compute the pvalue for the test and get a clear strong conclusion against the Kolmogorovian hypothesis.

DOI
10.31390/cosa.6.1.07

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It is often believed that de Finetti's coherence principle naturally leads, in the finite case, to the Kolmogorov's probability theory of random phenomena, which then implies Bell's inequality.Thus, not only a violation of Bell's inequality looks paradoxical in the Kolmogorovian framework, but it should violate also de Finetti's coherence principle.Firstly, we show that this is not the case: the typical theoretical violations of Bell's inequality in quantum physics are in agreement with de Finetti's coherence principle.Secondly, we look for statistical evidence of such violations: we consider the experimental data of measurements of polarization of photons, performed to verify empirically violations of Bell's inequality, and, on the basis of the estimated violation, we test the null hypothesis of Kolmogorovianity for the observed phenomenon.By standard inferential techniques we compute the pvalue for the test and get a clear strong conclusion against the Kolmogorovian hypothesis.
Among the various "no-go theorems" in the foundations of quantum mechanics, Bell inequalities are among the few, which do not implicitly rely on the mathematical structure of quantum mechanics. Instead, Bell inequalities are commonly understood to rest on Kolmogorov's theory of probability and a "locality" assumption. Physical evidence supporting their violation is hence taken as evidence against at least one of these two assumptions. This work provides a comprehensive analysis of the physical debate on Bell inequalities from the point of view of Kolmogorov's theory of probability, focusing on the Bell-Clauser-Horn-Shimony-Holt inequality (BCHSH inequality). The central contribution is the motivation and mathematical study of the notion of contextuality in Bell experiments: in so-called contextual Bell models the detectors themselves behave randomly and the distribution of the random detector parameters depends on the chosen detector settings. It is shown how even "classical" Bell experiments motivate such a description. The need to account for contextuality was pointed out before by de la Peña, Cetto, Brody, Lochak, Bohm, Hiley and others. A broad class of contextual models is proven to satisfy the BCHSH inequality, thereby generalizing a previous result by Gill and Lambare. Nonetheless, even under strong locality requirements, contextual Bell models may violate the BCHSH inequality: based on work by Popescu and Rohrlich, we consider a "proof of concept" example exhibiting the maximum possible violation. Contrary to the much debated "loopholes" in empirical tests of Bell inequalities, contextuality thus reveals a conceptual misunderstanding in the physical conclusions commonly drawn from Bell inequality violations.
The main aim of this review is to show that the common conclusion that Bell's argument implies that any attempt to proceed beyond quantum mechanics induces a nonlocal model was not totally justified. Our analysis of Bell's argument demonstrates that violation of Bell's inequality implies neither "death of realism" nor nonlocality. This violation is just a sign of non-Kolmogorovness of statistical data - impossibility to put statistical data collected in a few different experiments (corresponding to incompatible settings of polarization beam splitters) in one probability space. This inequality was well known in theoretical probability since 19th century (from works of Boole). We couple non-Kolmogorovness of data with design of modern detectors of photons.
We remind the viewpoint that violation of Bell's inequality might be interpreted not only as an evidence of the alternative -- either nonlocality or ``death of reality'' (under the assumption the quantum mechanics is incomplete). Violation of Bell's type inequalities is a well known sufficient condition of incompatibility of random variables -- impossibility to realize them on a single probability space. Thus, in fact, we should take into account an additional interpretation of violation of Bell's inequality -- a few pairs of random variables (two dimensional vector variables) involved in the EPR-Bohm experiment are incompatible. They could not be realized on a single Kolmogorov probability space. Thus one can choose between: a) completeness of quantum mechanics; b) nonlocality; c) `` death of reality''; d) non-Kolmogorovness. In any event, violation of Bell's inequality has a variety of possible interpretations. Hence, it could not be used to derive the unique conclusion on the relation between quantum and classical models.
We show that by taking into account randomness of realization of experimental contexts it is possible to construct common Kolmogorov space for data collected for these contexts, although they can be incompatible. We call such a construction "Kolmogorovization" of contextuality. This construction of common probability space is applied to Bell's inequality. It is well known that its violation is a consequence of collecting statistical data in a few incompatible experiments. In experiments performed in quantum optics contexts are determined by selections of pairs of angles (θi,θ'j) fixing orientations of polarization beam splitters. Opposite to the common opinion, we show that statistical data corresponding to measurements of polarizations of photons in the singlet state, e.g., in the form of correlations, can be described in the classical probabilistic framework. The crucial point is that in constructing the common probability space one has to take into account not only randomness of the source (as Bell did), but also randomness of context-realizations (in particular, realizations of pairs of angles (θi, θ'j)). One may (but need not) say that randomness of "free will" has to be accounted for.
We show that by taking into account randomness of realization of experimental contexts it is possible to construct common Kolmogorov space for data collected for these contexts, although they can be incompatible. We call such a construction "Kolmogorovization" of contextuality. This construction of common probability space is applied to Bell's inequality. It is well known that its violation is a consequence of collecting statistical data in a few incompatible experiments. In experiments performed in quantum optics contexts are determined by selections of pairs of angles ( θ i ,θ ' j ) fixing orientations of polarization beam splitters. Opposite to the common opinion, we show that statistical data corresponding to measurements of polarizations of photons in the singlet state, e.g., in the form of correlations, can be described in the classical probabilistic framework. The crucial point is that in constructing the common probability space one has to take into account not only randomness of the source (as Bell did), but also randomness of context-realizations (in particular, realizations of pairs of angles ( θ i , θ ' j )). One may (but need not) say that randomness of "free will" has to be accounted for.