Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:quant-ph/0512050

A Question of Self-consistent Semifactuality

Ken Williams

Published Dec 6, 2005• 1 citation
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

This article is intended as a compendium and guide to the variety of Bell Inequality derivations that have appeared in the literature in recent years, classifying them into six broad categories, revealing the underlying, often hidden, assumption common to each - semifactuality. Evaluation of the attendant conditional brings to light a significant EPR loophole that has not appeared in the literature. Semantics for the inequality in the ongoing philosophic debate that led to its discovery is discussed.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.quant-ph/0512050

Related papers

A logical loophole in the derivation of the Bell inequalities

G. Coddens

The Bell inequalities are based on a tacit assumption of a COMMON probabilitydistribution that precludes their application to the experiments of Aspect et al.

•Mar 19, 2018•1 citation

Bell Inequalities

George Jaroszkiewicz

Bell Inequalities IntroductionFrom the dawn of the quantum age in 1900, there has been an ongoing debate, often fierce and hostile, between the supporters of the classical world view and those of the quantum world view.This debate eventually led to remarkable experiments, the convincing and repeated results of which are claimed by quantum theorists to support the predictions of quantum mechanics (QM) and not those of classical mechanics (CM).However, old paradigms tend to linger on the shelves of science long past their sell-by dates and there are extant schools of theorists that strive to find loopholes in the above-mentioned experiments.That is a legitimate activity up to a point, but the divisive nature of the debate requires commentary, which is the subject matter of this chapter.QM was discovered only by advanced technology, so it stands to reason that any test of QM will require even more advanced technology.In the previous chapter we stressed the differences between active and passive transformations.The experiments discussed here rely on such technically difficult active transformations that the Hidden Variables (HV) theorists (for that is really what they are) opposing QM are frequently able to think of objections, known as loopholes, to the empirical protocols employed by the experimentalists.Some of these loopholes are reasonable but many are not.Closing those loopholes convincingly is an ongoing important activity in experimental quantum physics.A significant feature of the experiments discussed in this chapter is that they go beyond a certain point of complexity in terms of the number of classical and quantum degrees of freedom involved.Historically, before that point had been reached, classical interpretations of quantum wave functions appeared viable and perhaps even attractive, such as that proposed by Bohm (Bohm, 1952).We shall refer to the collective of such interpretations as the hidden variables (HV) paradigm and the point in question as the Heisenberg point.

Cambridge University Press eBooks•Jul 13, 2023•0 citations

Refutation of Bell's Original Inequality from 1964 with Assumptions

Colin James

•Sep 1, 2018•0 citations

The Bell inequalities: Commentary on the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022

Hong-Yi Su, Jing‐Ling Chen

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to three experiment physicists: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their contributions to “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. In this paper, the history, basics, and applications related with the Bell inequalities are reviewed. The discussion of fundamental issues on quantum mechanics dated back to the year 1927 when the fifth Solvay conference was held, highlighting intense arguments between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. At the time, Einstein expressed, publicly for the first time, his critical attitude towards quantum mechanics. While the arguments did not reach a decisive conclusion, Bohr’s probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation, had since been well circulated among the community. Einstein’s arguments with Bohr lasted many years after the conference. The arguably most famous one was the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, proposed in a 1935 paper written by the three authors. They stated, by flawless reasoning, that quantum mechanics is ‘incomplete’. Bohr replied immediately. So did Erwin Schrödinger, who, in particular, coined the term ‘entangled’ for the first time to describe the bizarre quantum mechanical property. Nevertheless, the EPR paper received few citations at its publication, until 1990’s when quantum information science started blossoming. From today’s perspective, the paper resembles the ‘sleeping beauty’ who slumbered for decades before fully awakening. It has been widely accepted that it was John S. Bell who eventually resolved the EPR paradox. But many important figures before him should not go unnoticed, including John A. Wheeler, Chien-Shiung Wu, David Bohm, to name a few. In 1964, Bell wrote down a mathematical inequality which satisfies local hidden variable theory but which can be violated in quantum mechanics. The significance is that Bell’s inequality brings the rather philosophic debates on the EPR paradox down to be experimentally testable. Hence, an experiment is here appealing, as is the case in all fields of physics. To the end, John F. Clauser, alongside Stuart J. Freedman, conducted an experiment in 1972 to test a Bell inequality, the Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, proposed by him and his collaborators in 1969. The results, however, leaves loopholes open. One of the loopholes was closed in a later experiment led by Alain Aspect in 1982. The Bell-CHSH inequality was later tested under a much stricter condition by Anton Zeilinger’s team. Two most important loopholes were both closed by three teams in 2015 independently. Zeilinger’s team was among them. Almost all experiments to date have confirmed quantum mechanical predictions. Zeilinger’s team also performed the first teleportation of unknown quantum states, the first entanglement swapping, along with other contributions pioneering the quantum information science. In retrospect, the foundational study of quantum theory has been developed over a century. It once drew much of quantum physics founders’ attention, went virtually unnoticed while other physical fields advanced, had for quite a while been considered to have very weak relationship with major physics, and finally revived in recent decades leading to rapid progress in quantum information science and quantum technology. We believe that the Nobel Prize in Physics this year is not only an award and recognition to past achievements, but also heralds a new era of science in future.

Chinese Science Bulletin (Chinese Version)•Oct 26, 2022•2 citations

What exactly is proved by the violation of Bell's inequality?

Gerold Gründler

Bell's inequality has been derived several times from quite different basic assumptions, which imply different conclusions. This resulted into widespread confusion regarding the exact implications of the experimental violations of the inequality. In this article, the structures of Bell's and of Peres' derivations are analyzed, and the title question is explicitly answered.

arXiv:1704.03856•Apr 11, 2017•0 citations

The experimental violation of Bell's inequality [as predicted by quantum mechanics]: A contribution to the study of its meaning

Bertrand Hespel

•Jan 1, 2001•0 citations
This article is intended as a compendium and guide to the variety of Bell Inequality derivations that have appeared in the literature in recent years, classifying them into six broad categories, revealing the underlying, often hidden, assumption common to each - semifactuality. Evaluation of the attendant conditional brings to light a significant EPR loophole that has not appeared in the literature. Semantics for the inequality in the ongoing philosophic debate that led to its discovery is discussed.
Bell Inequalities IntroductionFrom the dawn of the quantum age in 1900, there has been an ongoing debate, often fierce and hostile, between the supporters of the classical world view and those of the quantum world view.This debate eventually led to remarkable experiments, the convincing and repeated results of which are claimed by quantum theorists to support the predictions of quantum mechanics (QM) and not those of classical mechanics (CM).However, old paradigms tend to linger on the shelves of science long past their sell-by dates and there are extant schools of theorists that strive to find loopholes in the above-mentioned experiments.That is a legitimate activity up to a point, but the divisive nature of the debate requires commentary, which is the subject matter of this chapter.QM was discovered only by advanced technology, so it stands to reason that any test of QM will require even more advanced technology.In the previous chapter we stressed the differences between active and passive transformations.The experiments discussed here rely on such technically difficult active transformations that the Hidden Variables (HV) theorists (for that is really what they are) opposing QM are frequently able to think of objections, known as loopholes, to the empirical protocols employed by the experimentalists.Some of these loopholes are reasonable but many are not.Closing those loopholes convincingly is an ongoing important activity in experimental quantum physics.A significant feature of the experiments discussed in this chapter is that they go beyond a certain point of complexity in terms of the number of classical and quantum degrees of freedom involved.Historically, before that point had been reached, classical interpretations of quantum wave functions appeared viable and perhaps even attractive, such as that proposed by Bohm (Bohm, 1952).We shall refer to the collective of such interpretations as the hidden variables (HV) paradigm and the point in question as the Heisenberg point.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 was awarded to three experiment physicists: Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger, for their contributions to “experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”. In this paper, the history, basics, and applications related with the Bell inequalities are reviewed. The discussion of fundamental issues on quantum mechanics dated back to the year 1927 when the fifth Solvay conference was held, highlighting intense arguments between Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. At the time, Einstein expressed, publicly for the first time, his critical attitude towards quantum mechanics. While the arguments did not reach a decisive conclusion, Bohr’s probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, the Copenhagen interpretation, had since been well circulated among the community. Einstein’s arguments with Bohr lasted many years after the conference. The arguably most famous one was the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, proposed in a 1935 paper written by the three authors. They stated, by flawless reasoning, that quantum mechanics is ‘incomplete’. Bohr replied immediately. So did Erwin Schrödinger, who, in particular, coined the term ‘entangled’ for the first time to describe the bizarre quantum mechanical property. Nevertheless, the EPR paper received few citations at its publication, until 1990’s when quantum information science started blossoming. From today’s perspective, the paper resembles the ‘sleeping beauty’ who slumbered for decades before fully awakening. It has been widely accepted that it was John S. Bell who eventually resolved the EPR paradox. But many important figures before him should not go unnoticed, including John A. Wheeler, Chien-Shiung Wu, David Bohm, to name a few. In 1964, Bell wrote down a mathematical inequality which satisfies local hidden variable theory but which can be violated in quantum mechanics. The significance is that Bell’s inequality brings the rather philosophic debates on the EPR paradox down to be experimentally testable. Hence, an experiment is here appealing, as is the case in all fields of physics. To the end, John F. Clauser, alongside Stuart J. Freedman, conducted an experiment in 1972 to test a Bell inequality, the Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, proposed by him and his collaborators in 1969. The results, however, leaves loopholes open. One of the loopholes was closed in a later experiment led by Alain Aspect in 1982. The Bell-CHSH inequality was later tested under a much stricter condition by Anton Zeilinger’s team. Two most important loopholes were both closed by three teams in 2015 independently. Zeilinger’s team was among them. Almost all experiments to date have confirmed quantum mechanical predictions. Zeilinger’s team also performed the first teleportation of unknown quantum states, the first entanglement swapping, along with other contributions pioneering the quantum information science. In retrospect, the foundational study of quantum theory has been developed over a century. It once drew much of quantum physics founders’ attention, went virtually unnoticed while other physical fields advanced, had for quite a while been considered to have very weak relationship with major physics, and finally revived in recent decades leading to rapid progress in quantum information science and quantum technology. We believe that the Nobel Prize in Physics this year is not only an award and recognition to past achievements, but also heralds a new era of science in future.