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Supermeasured: Violating Bell-Statistical Independence without violating physical statistical independence

  • Jonte R Hance*
  • , Sabine Hossenfelder
  • , Tim N. Palmer
  • *Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

21 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Bell's theorem is often said to imply that quantum mechanics violates local causality, and that local causality cannot be restored with a hidden-variables theory. This however is only correct if the hidden-variables theory fulfils an assumption called Statistical Independence. Violations of Statistical Independence are commonly interpreted as correlations between the measurement settings and the hidden variables (which determine the measurement outcomes). Such correlations have been discarded as ``fine-tuning'' or a ``conspiracy''. We here point out that the common interpretation is at best physically ambiguous and at worst incorrect. The problem with the common interpretation is that Statistical Independence might be violated because of a non-trivial measure in state space, a possibility we propose to call ``supermeasured''. We use Invariant Set Theory as an example of a supermeasured theory that violates the Statistical Independence assumption in Bell's theorem without requiring correlations between hidden variables and measurement settings (physical statistical independence).
Original languageEnglish
Article number81
Number of pages15
JournalFoundations of Physics
Volume52
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 19 Jul 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Sophie Inman and John Rarity for useful discussions. TP is funded by a Royal Society Research Professorship. SH acknowledges support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under grant number HO 2601/8-1. JRH is supported by the University of York’s EPSRC DTP Grant EP/R513386/1, and the EPSRC Quantum Communications Hub (funded by the EPSRC Grants EP/M013472/1 and EP/T001011/1).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022, The Author(s).

Research Groups and Themes

  • QETLabs
  • Centre for Science and Philosophy
  • Bristol Quantum Information Institute

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  • QComms2: 8031 EP/T001011/1 Quantum Communication Hub via York

    Rarity, J. G. (Principal Investigator), Nejabati, R. (Co-Investigator), Simeonidou, D. (Co-Investigator), Sahin, D. (Co-Investigator), Kanellos, G. (Co-Investigator), Aktas, D. V. C. (Researcher), Joshi, S. K. (Researcher), Lowndes, D. L. D. (Researcher), Venkatachalam, N. (Researcher), Hugues Salas, E. (Researcher), Woodland, E. M. (Manager), Erven, C. (Co-Investigator), Zhang, P. (Student), Hance, J. R. (Student), Clark, M. J. H. (Student), Rosenfeld, L. M. (Researcher), Hastings, E. M. J. (Student), Johlinger, F. B. (Student), Wang, R. (Researcher), Stange Tessinari, R. (Researcher), Solomons, N. R. (Student), Fasoulakis, T. (Student) & Alia, O. (Researcher)

    1/12/1930/11/24

    Project: Research

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