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Bell's Theorem Main Hidden Assumption

Jacques Poitevineau, Yves‐Henri Sanejouand

Published Jan 1, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that the proofs of Bell’s theorem regarding the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradox about incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics implicitly use a negation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for particles taken separately. Moreover, we show that the entanglement of the pair of particules, hidden variables and locality property are not necessary to establish the theorem. In other words, the theorem only speaks about Heisenberg’s principle and its experimental violation is simply another demonstration of the fundamental character of this principle. Therefore, the paradox is still alive and abandoning the locality property, as often advocated, is premature.

DOI
10.13140/rg.2.2.24407.02728

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We show that the proofs of Bell’s theorem regarding the Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen paradox about incompleteness of Quantum Mechanics implicitly use a negation of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for particles taken separately. Moreover, we show that the entanglement of the pair of particules, hidden variables and locality property are not necessary to establish the theorem. In other words, the theorem only speaks about Heisenberg’s principle and its experimental violation is simply another demonstration of the fundamental character of this principle. Therefore, the paradox is still alive and abandoning the locality property, as often advocated, is premature.
By implicitly assuming that all possible Bell-measurements occur simultaneously, all proofs of Bell's Theorem violate Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. This assumption is made in the original form of Bell's inequality, in Wigner's probability inequalities, and in the ``nonlocality without inequalities'' arguments. The introduction of time into derivations of these variants of Bell's theorem results in extra terms related to the time order of the measurements used in constructing correlation coefficients. Since the same locality assumptions are made in the Heisenberg-compliant derivations of this paper, only time-independent classical local hidden variable theories are forbidden by violations of the original Bell inequalities; time-dependent quantum local hidden variable theories can satisfy this new bound and agree with experiment. We further point out that factorizable wavefunctions have been used to describe some EPR experiments and can be used to describe others. These will generate local de Broglie-Bohm trajectories in the description of the data. This second, independent, line of argument also shows that violation of Bell's inequality is only evidence that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle cannot be ignored.
The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox that argues for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics as a description of physical reality has been put to rest by John Bell’s famous theorem, which inspired numerous experimental tests and brought about further affirmations of quantum reality. Nevertheless, in his writings and public presentations, Richard Feynman never acknowledged the significance of Bell’s contribution to the resolution of the EPR paradox. In this paper, we discuss several variants of the Bell inequalities (including one that was specifically espoused by Feynman), and explore the ways in which they demolish the arguments in favor of local hidden-variable theories. We also examine the roots of Feynman’s attitude toward Bell’s theorem in the context of Feynman’s special perspective on quantum mechanics.
In 1935, Albert Einstein and two colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen (EPR) developed a thought experiment to demonstrate what they felt was a lack of completeness in quantum mechanics (QM). EPR also postulated the existence of more fundamental theory where physical reality of any system would be completely described by the variables/states of that fundamental theory. This variable is commonly called hidden variable and the theory is called hidden variable theory (HVT). In 1964, John Bell proposed an empirically verifiable criterion to test for the existence of these HVTs. He derived an inequality, which must be satisfied by any theory that fulfill the conditions of locality and reality. He also showed that QM, as it violates this inequality, is incompatible with any local-realistic theory. Later it has been shown that Bell’s inequality (BI) can be derived from different set of assumptions and it also find applications in useful information theoretic protocols. In this review, we will discuss various foundational as well as information theoretic implications of BI. We will also discuss about some restricted nonlocal feature of quantum nonlocality and elaborate the role of Uncertainty principle and Complementarity principle in explaining this feature.
Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen pointed out that the quantum-mechanical description of “physical reality” implies an unphysical, instantaneous action between distant measurements. To avoid such an action at a distance, these three concluded that quantum mechanics had to be incomplete. However, its extensions involving additional “hidden variables,” allowing for the recovery of determinism and locality, have been disproved experimentally (Bell’s theorem). In this paper, an opposite solution of the paradox is presented, based on the greater indeterminism of the modern quantum field theory (QFT) description of particle physics, which prevents the preparation of any state having a definite number of particles. The resulting uncertainty in photon radiation has interesting consequences in quantum information theory (e.g., cryptography and teleportation). Moreover, since it allows for fewer elements of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) physical reality than the old non-relativistic quantum mechanics, QFT satisfies the EPR condition of completeness without the need for hidden variables. The residual physical reality never violates locality; thus, the unique objective proof of “quantum nonlocality” is removed in an interpretation-independent way. At the same time, the supposed nonlocality of the EPR correlations turns out to be a problem in interpretation of the measurement process. If we do not rely on hidden variables or new physics beyond QFT, the viable interpretation is a minimal statistical one, which preserves locality and Lorentz symmetry.
By implicitly assuming that all measurements occur simultaneously, Bell's Theorem only applied to local theories that violated Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle. By explicitly introducing time into our derivation of Bell's theorem, an extra term related to the time-ordering of actual measurements is found to augment (i.e. weaken) the upper bound of the inequality. Since the same locality assumptions hold for this rederivation as for the original, we conclude that only {\em classical} measurement-order independent local hidden variable theories are constrained by Bell's inequality; time dependent, non-classical local theories (i.e. theories respecting Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) can satisfy this new bound while exceeding Bell's limit. Unconditional nonlocality is only expected to occur with Bell parameters between 222\sqrt{2}22​ and 4. This weakening of Bell's inequality is seen for the quantum Bell operator (squared) as an extra term involving the commutators of {\em local} measurement operators. We note that a factorizable second-quantized wavefunction can reproduce experimental measurements; because such wavefunctions allow local de Broglie-Bohm hidden variable modelling, we have another indication that violation of {\em Bell's} inequality does not require an acceptance of non-locality.