# Strengthening the Bell Theorem: conditions to falsify local realism in an experiment

## Abstract

The two-particle correlation obtained from the quantum state used in the Bell inequality is sinusoidal, but the standard Bell inequality only uses two pairs of settings and not the whole sinusoidal curve. The highest to-date visibility of an explicit model reproducing sinusoidal fringes is $`2/\pi `$. We conjecture from a numerical approach presented in this paper that the highest possible visibility for a local hidden variable model reproducing the sinusoidal character of the quantum prediction for the two-particle Bell-type interference phenomena is $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$. In addition, the approach can be applied directly to experimental data.

It is a common wisdom in the quantum optical community that the threshold visibility of the sinusoidal two-particle interference pattern beyond which the Bell inequalities are violated is (for the case of perfect detectors) $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ (see, e. g. ). Most of the experiments exceed that limit (with the usual “fair sampling assumption”) . Some difficulties to reach this threshold were observed in the very early experiments , as well as in some recent ones involving novel techniques. Thus far, in atomic interferometry EPR experiments  and for the phenomenon of entanglement swapping , the resulting visibility is less than the magic $`71\%`$.

It is also well known that the Clauser-Horne inequality and the CHSH inequality are not only necessary conditions for the existence of local realistic models but also sufficient  (in the case of the CHSH inequality, this requires some simplifying assumptions ). However, the sufficiency proofs used involve only two pairs of settings of the local macroscopic parameters (e.g. orientations of the polarizers) that define the measured local observables. Thus, the constructions are valid for precisely those settings and nothing more, and there is no guarantee that the models can be extended to more settings. Consequently one may ask what is the maximal visibility for a model applicable to all possible settings of the measuring apparata, that returns sinusoidal two particle interference fringes. It is already known that for perfect detectors, this value cannot be higher than $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ or lower than $`2/\pi `$ (this is the visibility of the recent ad hoc model by Larsson ; for earlier models returning visibilities of $`50\%`$ see e.g. ).

The knowledge of the maximal visibility of sinusoidal two-particle fringes in a Bell-type experiment that still can be fully modeled in a local realistic way, may help us to distinguish better between ‘local’ and ‘nonlocal’ density matrices. For two two-state systems one can find precise conditions which have to be satisfied by density matrices describing the general state, pure or mixed, of the full system, that enable violation of the CHSH inequalities . States fulfilling such conditions are often called “nonlocal”. However, since the CHSH inequality is necessary and sufficient only for two pairs of settings, it is not excluded a priori that some states that satisfy such inequalities for all possible sets of two pairs of local dichotomic observables, nevertheless give predictions that in their entirety cannot be modeled by local hidden variables. Such models must first of all reproduce the full continuous sinusoidal variation of two-particle interference fringes, as well as the other predictions.

It is clear that the full solution of the question would require a construction, or a proof of existence, of local hidden variable models which return sinusoidal fringes of the maximal possible visibility, that are applicable for all possible settings of the measuring apparata. Since this seems to be very difficult, we chose a numerical method of pointwise approximation at a finite number of settings at each side of the experiment. Due to exponential growth of the computation time when the number of settings increases, we managed to reach up to 9 settings on each side, i.e. up to 81 measurements points (which due to a certain symmetry, about which we will say more later, effectively can be transformed into $`18\times 18=324`$ points). The exponential growth hinders any substantial increase in this number. Such numerical models cannot give a definite answer concerning the critical visibility of sinusoidal fringes, however our calculations enable us to put forward a strong conjecture that this value must be indeed $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ (see below).

Experimentally our problem can be formulated in the following way: the two particle state produced by the source does not allow for single particle interference, and in the experiment less-than-perfect two-particle fringes are obtained, due to some fundamental limitations (like those present in the case of entanglement swapping, e.g. ) or due to imperfections of the devices. What is the critical two particle interference visibility beyond which the observed process falsifies local realism? We shall ask these questions assuming, for simplicity, perfect detection efficiencies, which is possible theoretically, and experimentally thus far amounts to the usual “fair sampling assumption”.

Furthermore, the problem may be investigated without the use of the assumption that the observed fringes are of a sinusoidal nature even though two observed two-particle fringes in experiments with high photon counts follow almost exactly the sinusoidal curves . In experiments with lower count rates, still with relatively good level of confidence the recorded data have approximately the same character, and it is customary to fit them with sinusoidal curves. It is now a standard procedure to perform the two-particle interference experiments by recording many points of the interference pattern, rather than stabilizing the devices at measurement settings appropriate for the best violation of some Bell inequality. Further, in some of the experiments, e.g. those involving optical fiber interferometers it is currently not possible to stabilize the phase differences and what is observed is just the interference pattern changing in time, and the visibility of the sinusoidal two-particle fringes is used as the critical parameter .

Even though the numerical calculations presented here only reach $`18\times 18`$ points, this is more than enough in comparison to the experimental data. The usual experimental scans rarely involve more than 20 points. Further, our algorithm can be applied directly to the measurement data, and in that way one can even avoid the standby hypothesis that the fringes follow a sinusoidal pattern. The algorithm can directly answer the question: are the data compatible with local realism or not? Since physics is an experimental science, the questions about Nature get their final answers solely in this way.

Let us now go to a formal treatment of the problem, and our numerical solution of it. In a standard Bell-type experiment one has a source emitting two particles, each of which propagates towards one of two spatially separated measuring devices. The particles are described by the maximally entangled state, e.g.,

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|+_1|_2|_1|+_2),`$ (1)   
where $`|+_1`$ is the state of the first particle with its spin directed along the vector $`𝒛`$ of a certain frame of reference ($``$ denotes the opposite direction), etc. We will now assume that the measuring devices are Stern-Gerlach apparata, measuring the observable $`𝒏𝝈`$, where $`n=a,b`$ ($`a`$ for the first observer, $`b`$ for the second one), $`𝒏`$ is a unit vector representing direction at which observer $`n`$ makes a measurement and $`𝝈`$ is a vector the components of which are standard Pauli matrices. The family of observables $`𝒏𝝈`$ covers all possible dichotomic observables for a spin $`\frac{1}{2}`$ system, endowed with a spectrum consisting of $`\pm 1`$.

In each run of the experiment every observer obtains one of the two possible results of measurement, $`\pm 1`$. The probability of obtaining the result $`m=\pm 1`$ at the observer $`a`$, when measuring the projection of the spin of the incoming particle at the direction $`𝒂`$, and the result $`l=\pm 1`$ at the observer $`b`$, when measuring the projection of spin of the incoming particle at the direction $`𝒃`$ is equal to

$`P_{QM}(m,l;𝒂,𝒃)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(1ml𝒂𝒃),`$ (2)   
while the probabilities of obtaining one of the results in the local stations reveal no dependence on the local parameters, $`P_{QM}(m;𝒂)=\frac{1}{2}`$ and $`P_{QM}(l;𝒃)=\frac{1}{2}`$. In a real experiment, however, one cannot expect that the observed probabilities will follow (2). Therefore, we will allow that the interference pattern is of a reduced visibility. In such a case (2) should be replaced by

$`P_{QM}(m,l;𝒂,𝒃)={\displaystyle \frac{1}{4}}(1mlV𝒂𝒃),`$ (3)   
where $`0V1`$ stands for the visibility.

Now for the pointwise approximation. For $`V=1`$ the quantum prediction for two-particle correlation function reads:

$`E_{QM}(𝒂,𝒃)={\displaystyle \underset{m,l}{}}mlP(m,l;𝒂,𝒃)=𝒂𝒃,`$ (4)   
and there is no single particle interference (i.e. the local results are absolutely random). If one assumes that the unit vectors which define the measured observables are always coplanar the correlation function can be simplified to $`E_{QM}(\alpha ,\beta )=\mathrm{cos}(\alpha \beta )`$ (with the obvious definition of $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$). Let us assume that in the experiment the observer at the side $`a`$ chooses between, say, $`N`$ settings of the local apparatus, denoted here by $`𝒂_i`$ with $`i=1,2,3,\mathrm{}N`$, and the other observer, at side $`b`$, chooses between $`M`$ settings $`𝒃_j`$, with $`j=1,2,\mathrm{},M`$. The quantum correlation function for $`V=1`$ has at these settings the following fixed numerical values: $`E_{QM}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)=𝒂_i𝒃_j.`$ Thus, we have a certain matrix of quantum predictions. We can denote this matrix by $`\widehat{𝐐}`$, with $`Q_{ij}=E_{QM}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)`$. For $`V1`$ the correlation function reduces to $`VQ_{ij}`$.

The Bell theorem is a statement on the impossibility of modeling certain quantum predictions by local and realistic theories. To make the matters simpler let us use the local hidden variable (LHV) formalism. Within such a formalism the correlation function must have the following structure

$$E_{LHV}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)=𝑑\lambda \rho (\lambda )A(𝒂_i,\lambda )B(𝒃_j,\lambda ),$$
(5)   
where for dichotomic measurements $`A(𝒂_i,\lambda )=\pm 1`$ and $`B(𝒃_j,\lambda )=\pm 1`$, and they represent the values of local measurements predetermined by the LHV’s, denoted by $`\lambda `$, for the specified local settings. This expression is an average over a certain LHV distribution $`\rho (\lambda )`$ of certain factorizable (rank 1) matrices, namely those with elements given by $`M(\lambda )_{ij}=A(𝒂_i,\lambda )B(𝒃_j,\lambda )`$. The symbol $`\lambda `$ may hide very many parameters. However, since the only possible values of $`A(𝒂_i,\lambda )`$ and $`B(𝒃_j,\lambda )`$ are $`\pm 1`$ there are only $`2^N`$ different sequences of the values of $`(A(𝒂_1,\lambda ),A(𝒂_2,\lambda ),\mathrm{},A(𝒂_N,\lambda ))`$, and only $`2^M`$ different sequences of $`(B(𝒃_1,\lambda ),B(𝒃_2,\lambda ),\mathrm{},B(𝒃_M,\lambda ))`$ and consequently they form only $`2^{N+M}`$ matrices $`\widehat{M}(\lambda )`$. Therefore the structure of LHV models of $`E_{LHV}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)`$ reduces to discrete probabilistic models involving the average of all the $`2^{N+M}`$ matrices $`\widehat{M}(\lambda )`$. In other words, the LHV’s can be replaced, without any loss of generality, by a certain pair of variables $`k`$ and $`l`$ that have integer values respectively from $`1`$ to $`2^N`$ and from $`1`$ to $`2^M`$. To each $`k`$ we ascribe one possible sequence of the possible values of $`A(𝒂_i,\lambda )`$, denoted from now on by $`A(𝒂_i,k)`$, similarly we replace $`B(𝒃_j,\lambda )`$ by $`B(𝒃_j,l)`$. With this notation the possible LHV models of the correlation function $`E_{LHV}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)`$ acquire the following simple form

$$E_{LHV}(𝒂_i,𝒃_j)=\underset{k=1}{\overset{2^N}{}}\underset{l=1}{\overset{2^M}{}}p_{kl}A(𝒂_i,k)B(𝒃_j,l),$$
(6)   
with, of course, the probabilities satisfying $`p_{kl}0`$ and $`p_{kl}=1`$.

The special case that we study here enables us to simplify the description further. To satisfy the additional requirement that the LHV model returns the quantum prediction of equal probability of the results at the local observation stations, that $`P(l;𝒂)=P(m;𝒃)=\frac{1}{2}`$, one can use the following observation. For each $`k`$, there must exist a $`k^{}k`$ with the property that $`A(𝒂_i,k^{})=A(𝒂_i,k)`$, and similarly for each $`l`$, there must exist an $`l^{}l`$ for which $`B(𝒃_j,l^{})=B(𝒃_j,l)`$. Then $`A(𝒂_i,k)B(𝒃_j,l)=A(𝒂_i,k^{})B(𝒃_j,l^{})`$, and thus they give exactly the same matrix of LHV predictions. By assuming $`p_{kl}=p_{k^{}l^{}}`$ the property of total randomness of local results will always be reproduced by the LHV models, and the generality will not be reduced since the contributions of $`p_{kl}`$ and $`p_{k^{}l^{}}`$ to (6) cannot be distinguished. Of course in the actual computer calculations of the correlation function we take only one representative of the two pairs, reducing in this way the number of probabilities and matrices of LHV predictions in (6) by a factor of two.

Another reduction by a factor of four is given by the fact that in the coplanar case, the choice of the settings may be limited on each side to ranges not greater than $`\pi `$ (i.e. $`\varphi \alpha _i\varphi +\pi ,\psi \beta _j\psi +\pi `$). This is due to the simple observation that a model of the type (6) once established for such settings can be easily extended to settings $`\alpha _i^{^{}}=\alpha _j+\pi ,\beta _j^{^{}}=\beta _j+\pi `$ by putting $`A(\alpha _i^{^{}},l)=A(\alpha _i,l)`$ and $`B(\beta _j^{^{}},l)=B(\beta _j,l)`$ (nevertheless, some scans with wider ranges were performed).

The conditions for LHV’s to reproduce the quantum prediction with a final visibility $`V`$ can be simplified to the problem of maximizing a parameter $`V`$ for which exists a set of $`2^{N+M}`$ probabilities, $`p_{kl}`$, such that

$$\underset{k=1}{\overset{2^N}{}}\underset{l=1}{\overset{2^M}{}}p_{kl}A(𝒂_i,k)B(𝒃_j,l)=VQ_{ij}.$$
(7)   
This is a typical linear optimization problem in which we have more unknowns than conditions and for which many good algorithms exist. Therefore the simplest method to solve it is to use the standard method of linear programming. The core of the algorithm is a procedure which finds the maximum of a linear function within the given constraints. In our case the constraints are the $`N\times M`$ equations (7), and the condition that $`p_{kl}=1`$. Our unknowns are all $`p_{kl}`$ and $`V`$ (all nonnegative). We can treat them as points in $`2^{N+M}+1`$ dimensional space. The constraints given by (7) define some subset of this space. On this subset we use the trivial linear function $`f(p_{kl},V)=V`$ as our goal function (for clarity, our function depends only on the variable $`V`$) and we search for its maximum.

In order to apply this method to experimental results, replace $`Q_{ij}`$ in (7) by the measured values $`E_{ij}^{\text{exp}}`$, and perform the same task. If the critical $`V`$  returned by the program is less that $`1`$, the data cannot be reproduced by any LHV model. Note that one even does not have to know what the settings are(!). This type of approach may be useful especially when one is not able to stabilize the interferometers at settings which are required for some Bell inequality, but there are data at many other settings.

For the case of coplanar settings we have checked lots of “interesting” combinations of the settings of the apparata at each side (e.g. $`N\times N`$ problems , $`2N9`$, with evenly spaced settings, etc. ). The main interesting generic feature of our results is the following one. Whenever among the coplanar settings $`\alpha _i`$ and $`\beta _j`$ there is a subset $`\alpha _{i_1}`$, $`\alpha _{i_2}`$ and $`\beta _{j_1}`$, $`\beta _{j_2}`$ such that for these settings the CHSH inequality (equivalently CH inequality) is maximally violated by the ideal quantum prediction, our optimum, the maximal visibility reproduced by LHV’s, is $`V=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$. In all other cases, namely for those settings without any such a subset, we have obtained maximal visibilities describable by LHV’s (usually, slightly) higher than $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$. However with increasing number of more or less evenly spaced settings this difference decreases. For general measurement directions (i.e. those including non-coplanar settings) all numerical scans follow the same pattern as for the co-planar case. Additionally, we have checked 200000 randomly chosen sets of $`5\times 5`$ settings, and never a visibility lower than $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ has been returned. All this strongly suggests that a LHV model returning correlation function of the form $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}𝒂𝒃`$ in its entirety indeed exists.

Furthermore, in the coplanar case, using carefully chosen equally spaced settings more structure is introduced into the model, in the form of two additional symmetries of the matrix $`\widehat{Q}`$ (in addition to the ones described above): ordinary matrix-transpose symmetry, and constant diagonals. This reduces the rate of the exponential growth of the calculation to a point where the problem is computable on a standard PC in reasonable time, even for $`13\times 13`$ (extendible to $`26\times 26`$) settings. Even in this case the returned visibilities exhibit the behavior discussed above and always satisfy $`V\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$.

Finally let us present application of our method to raw experimental data. In a recent Bell-type experiment Weinfurter and Michler have obtained the following matrix of results 

$$\widehat{E^{\text{exp}}}=\left[\begin{array}{ccc}0.894& 0.061& 0.761\\ 0.851& 0.343& 0.765\\ 0.625& 0.688& 0.516\\ 0.251& 0.860& 0.103\\ 0.226& 0.921& 0.389\\ 0.530& 0.651& 0.648\\ 0.855& 0.323& 0.832\\ 0.852& 0.092& 0.843\\ 0.785& 0.539& 0.638\\ 0.397& 0.795& 0.253\end{array}\right].$$
(8)   
Our program gives the verdict that the values of all entries to the matrix of results have to be reduced by the factor of $`0.796`$ to be describable by local hidden variables.

In the recent long-distance EPR-Bell experiment the following set of values of the correlation function was obtained :

$$\widehat{E^{\text{exp}}}=\left[\begin{array}{cc}0.960& 0.102\\ 0.903& 0.375\\ 0.733& 0.660\\ 0.479& 0.809\\ 0.191& 0.903\\ 0.120& 0.923\\ 0.429& 0.807\\ 0.666& 0.656\\ 0.842& 0.395\\ 0.951& 0.152\\ 0.953& 0.171\end{array}\right].$$
(9)   
This matrix has to be reduced by the factor of $`0.7366`$ to have a local realistic description.

To conclude, the performed calculations enable us to put forward the following conjecture, which is the main result of this letter: sinusoidal two-particle fringes of visibility up to $`\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}`$ are describable by local realistic theories. At this stage we are not able to give an analytic proof of the above. However, for finite sets of measurement points the results of data analysis with the use of our program fully concur with this hypothesis. This implies, e.g. that one needs a re-run of the entanglement swapping experiment, in order to show that this phenomenon can lead to observable violations of local realism.

MŻ was supported by the University of Gdansk Grant No BW/5400-5-0264-9. DK was supported by the KBN Grant 2 P03B 096 15. MŻ thanks A. Zeilinger, H. Weinfurter and N. Gisin for discussions on the subject.