# Untitled Document

Comment on “A local hidden variable model of quantum correlations exploiting the detection loophole”.

Recently, N. and B. Gisin presented a local hidden variable (l.h.v.) model exploiting the detection loophole which reproduces exactly the quantum correlations of the singlet state, whenever the detectors efficiency is less than or equal to 2/3 . The first aim of the present comment is to show that, modulo slight modifications, this model also allows us to simulate the quantum correlations that would be observed during the static realisation of a Franson-type experiment in the case of fully efficient detectors. Such a result was already presented in . The second aim of this comment is to compare the models developed in the references  and . We shall show that, beyond strong similarities between the two approaches, only the first one makes it possible to simulate the situation in which the correlations of the singlet state are tested with non-coplanar settings of the polariser.

First of all, we invite the interested reader to consult at least the references  and  before reading our comment, because we shall systematically refer to them for technical details, in order not to overload the presentation of this comment.

Remarkably, the procedures followed in these models present strong similarities. In both cases, the starting point is to consider the ”linear” model, a well-known l.h.v. model which saturates Bell’s inequalities. In this sense, this model can be considered to furnish one of the ”best” simulations of non-local correlations in terms of local ones. It predicts that the correlation function between the values of dichotomic observables measured in two different locations exhibits a linear dependence on the difference of two arbitrary local phases. These phases correspond to the directions of the local polarisers observed in a Bell-like situation  and to phase shifts between two arms of local interferometers in Franson-like situations . At this level, both models proceed in the following way: 50 % of the values of the hidden variables that contributed to this linear dependence are erased in such a way that the correlation function now exhibits a cosinusoidal dependence on the phase difference, which is proportional to the quantum correlation function exhibited by the singlet state. For sure, the price to pay is that 50 % of the coincident detections that appeared in the linear model have now disappeared. In the model of , they are replaced by (conveniently symmetrised between both detectors) single detections. This trick allows the authors, by exploiting the detection loophole, to simulate a situation for which the detectors efficiencies are equal to 2/3, in which case one checks directly that the ratio between the rate of single and coincident detections is equal to one, as it must be ($`\frac{21/32/3}{2/32/3}=\frac{50\%}{50\%}`$).

In the case of a Franson-like experiment with perfect detectors, the situation is slightly different: coincident detections occur in 50 % of the cases, and non-coincident detections occur otherwise. The trick here is to follow the same procedure as for the Bell situation with unefficient detectors but, instead of associating the values of the hidden parameters that are erased from the linear model with no-clicks in one detector, it is sufficient to let them correspond with delayed, non-coincident, detections in this detector. The delay time is equal to the difference between the times of flight along the long arm and the short arm of the interferometers present in Franson’s device (see  for details). By doing so, the total number of clicks is conserved, which corresponds to the assumption of ideal detection (efficiency of the detectors equal to one), and one gets 50 % of non-coincident detections and 50 % of coincident ones, in accordance with the standard predictions in this case. This is the essence of the model presented in . Remark that a symmetrisation procedure is now necessary in order to avoid to introduce an artificial temporal dissymmetry between the times of appearance of single detections and those of coincident detections. Incidentally, this symmetrisation procedure restablishes the symmetry between both detectors. Note that this procedure is valid only if the delayed statistics is the same as the advanced one, which means that the phase settings inside the interferometers used during the experiment are not changed too quickly. This property can be shown to be a particular case of a very general feature: no l.h.v. model exists that could reproduce the statistics of Franson-like experiments whenever the phase settings are changed at a rate superior to the time delay between both arms of the interferometers. This point is discussed with great accuracy in .

At first sight one could think that the Franson-like situation corresponds to an effective efficiency of the detectors equal to $`\sqrt{0.5}`$ (close to 70 %), which is higher than 2/3, but the effective efficiency that can be reached thanks to this procedure (when one erases 50 % of the statistics) is necessarily equal to 2/3 as we already showed. What differenciates both situations is the appearance of coincident null counts which have no counterpart in the Franson-like situation, in which detectors are assumed to be perfect. In this situation, 50 % of the events are good in the sense that their statistics violates Bell’s inequalities, and 50 % are bad, but bad events ALWAYS come in pairs, whereas in the situation with unefficient detectors, non-detection events come either in single detection station OR in both.

This was the first point of our comment: strong analogies exist between l.h.v. models aimed at simulating the violation of Bell’s inequalities in the case of unefficient detectors and l.h.v. models that simulate the statistics of Franson-like experiments. In summary, deleted clicks in the former corrrespond to delayed or advanced, non-coincident, clicks in the latter.

In fact, the general method sketched here which consists of departing from the linear model and of ”erasing” some values of the hidden parameter in order to simulate the (biased) quantum correlations was already developed earlier. For instance, in the references  and , the authors even showed, thanks to an ingenious symmetrisation procedure, how to simulate the statistics obtained with detectors of efficiency equal to 77.80 %, which lies very closely to the theoretical upper bound on efficiencies<sup>1</sup><sup>1</sup>1See  and  for a detailed discussion in the (realistic) case of a non-ideal visibility of the correlation function. (82.83 %). At first sight, the approach followed in  and  is the most efficient one, in comparison to the treatment presented in  (2/3 is less than 4/5). Nevertheless, the possibility of non-coplanar settings of the polarisers in a Bell-like experiment allows us to distinguish more finely these two approaches. In the first model , the hidden variable implemented in the linear model, essentially a direction, is isotropically distributed on the unity sphere, a 2-dimensional surface. In the other approaches , the corresponding hidden variable, essentially an angle, is distributed on the unity circle, a 1-dimensional surface. In the last case, it is impossible to apply the model to the case of non-coplanar settings, as we shall now show. The correlation function of the singlet state is cosinusoidal in the relative angle between the directions of the settings of the polarisers. In virtue of the constraints imposed by the requirement of locality, the hidden variable in , which is an angle, must be evaluated relatively to an arbitrary direction of reference that must be fixed before the particles leave the source. Now, in the case of non-coplanar settings, the triangular inequality on the sphere imposes that the relative angle between two directions is, in general, not equal to the difference of the angles taken between these directions and an a priori fixed direction of reference, so that the model does not work in general. For what does concern the model developed in , which does not violate the rotational invariance of the singlet state, the extension to the case of non-coplanar settings is realised without problem.

It is shown in  that one can build analytical l.h.v. models that approach very closely the statistics of the singlet state whenever the detectors efficiency is less than or equal to the efficiency treshhold (82.83 %), provided one considers coplanar settings of the polarisers only. It is natural to ask the question whether this is still true whenever one also considers non-coplanar settings, in which case the amount of constraints to be fulfilled considerably increases. It could be that l.h.v. models for which hidden variables are triplets of orthogonal vectors of the unity sphere (or Bloch sphere) provide good candidates for performing the job. Such a model supplies the best presently available candidate for classical teleportation in the sense that it minimizes the amount of classical information necessary in order to simulate quantum teleportation (see  and references therein).

Dr. Thomas Durt, post-doctoral fellow of the Fund for Scientific Research (FWO), Flanders;

FUND, V.U.B., Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium. e-mail: thomdurt@vub.ac.be

 N. Gisin and B. Gisin, quant-ph/9905018, A local hidden variable model of quantum correlation exploiting the detection loophole.  S. Aerts, P. Kwiat, J-A. Larsson and M. Zukowski, quant-ph/9812053, Two-photon Franson-type interference experiments are no tests of local realism.  J-A. Larsson, Phys. Lett. A, 256: 245-252, 1999, Modeling the singlet state with local variables.  E. Santos, Phys. Lett. A, 212: 10-14, 1996, Unreliability of performed tests of Bell’s inequalities using parmetric-down converted photons.  N-J. Cerf, N. Gisin, and S. Massar, quant-ph/99061, Classical Teleportation of a Quantum Bit.

Acknowledgements: The author would like to thank M. Zukowski and D. Kaszlikowski for helpful and stimulating discussions during his visit in Gdansk in June 1999, and for financial support of the Flemish-Polish Scientific Collaboration Program No. 007.