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Bell Theorem naive view Alain Aspect
34 pages
English

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Niveau: Supérieur, Doctorat, Bac+8
Bell Theorem naive view 18 Alain Aspect BELL'S THEOREM : THE NAIVE VIEW OF AN EXPERIMENTALIST† Alain Aspect Institut d'Optique Théorique et Appliquée Bâtiment 503-Centre universitaire d'Orsay 91403 ORSAY Cedex – France 1. INTRODUCTION It is a real emotion to participate to this conference in commemoration of John Bell. I first met him in 1975, a few months after reading his famous paper1. I had been so strongly impressed by this paper, that I had immediately decided to do my « thèse d'état » – which at that time, in France, could be a really long work – on this fascinating problem. I definitely wanted to carry out an experiment « in which the settings are changed during the flight of the particles », as suggested in the paper, and I had convinced a young professor of the Institut d'Optique, Christian Imbert, to support my project and to act as my thesis advisor. But he had advised me to first go to Geneva, and to discuss my proposal with John Bell. I got an appointment without delay, and I showed up in John's office at CERN, very impressed. While I was explaining my planned experiment, he silently listened. Eventually, I stopped talking, and the first question came: “Have you a permanent position?” After my positive answer, he started talking of physics, and he definitely encouraged me, making it clear that he would consider the implementation of variable analysers a fundamental improvement.

  • theories

  • probabilities p±

  • quantum mechanics

  • considering supplementary

  • distant photon

  • supplementary parameters

  • individually random

  • random quantities


Sujets

Aspect
Geneva
Imbert
Vienna
Théorie
Quantum mechanics

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Nombre de lectures 28
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Bell Theorem naive view 18 Alain Aspect
BELL’S THEOREM : THE NAIVE VIEW OF AN EXPERIMENTALIST
†
Alain Aspect
Institut d'Optique Théorique et Appliquée
Bâtiment 503-Centre universitaire d'Orsay
91403 ORSAY Cedex – France
alain.aspect@iota.u-psud.fr
1. INTRODUCTION
It is a real emotion to participate to this conference in commemoration of John Bell. I first
met him in 1975, a few months after reading his famous paper
1
. I had been so strongly
impressed by this paper, that I had immediately decided to do my « thèse d’état » – which
at that time, in France, could be a really long work – on this fascinating problem. I
definitely wanted to carry out an experiment « in which the settings are changed during the
flight of the particles », as suggested in the paper, and I had convinced a young professor
of the Institut d’Optique, Christian Imbert, to support my project and to act as my thesis
advisor. But he had advised me to first go to Geneva, and to discuss my proposal with John
Bell. I got an appointment without delay, and I showed up in John’s office at CERN, very
impressed. While I was explaining my planned experiment, he silently listened.
Eventually, I stopped talking, and the first question came: “Have you a permanent
position?” After my positive answer, he started talking of physics, and he definitely
encouraged me, making it clear that he would consider the implementation of variable
analysers a fundamental improvement. Beyond his celebrated sense of humour, his answer
reminds me of the general atmosphere at that time about raising questions on the
foundations of quantum mechanics. Quite frequently it was open hostility, and in the best
case, it would provoke an ironical reaction: “Quantum Mechanics has been vindicated by
such a large amount of work by the smartest theorists and experimentalists, how can you
hope to find anything with such a simple scheme, in optics, a science of the XIX
th
century?” In addition to starting the experiment, I had then to develop a line of argument to
try to convince the physicists I met (and among them some had to give their opinion about
funding my project). After some not so successfull tentatives of quite sophisticated pleas, I
eventually found out that it was much more efficient to explain the very simple and naive
†
This text was prepared for a talk at a conference in memory of John Bell, held in Vienna in December
2000. It has been published in “Quantum [Un]speakables – From Bell to Quantum information”, edited by R.
A. Bertlmann and A. Zeilinger, Springer (2002).
Bell Theorem naive view 18
2 / 34
Al
ain Aspect
way in which I had understood Bell’s theorem. And to my great surprise, that simple
presentation was very convincing even with the most theoretically inclined interlocutors. I
was lucky enough to be able to present it in front of John Bell himself, and he apparently
appreciated it. I am therefore going to explain now how I understood Bell’s theorem
twenty five years ago, and I hope to be able to communicate the shock I received, that was
so strong that I spent eight years of my life working on this problem.
This written transcription of my presentation is partly based on a paper that was
published two decades ago as a proceedings of a conference, not so easy to find
nowadays
2
. The first part of the paper aims at explaining what are Bell’s theorem and
Bell’s inequalities, and why I find it so important. It is followed by a rapid review of the
first generation of experimental tests of Bell’s inequalities with pairs of entangled photons
,
carried out between 1971 and 1976. I am glad that most of the heroes of this seeding work
are present at this meeting. I give then a more detailed description of the three
experiments
of second generation
, that we performed at the Institut d’Optique d’Orsay between 1976
and 1982, with a dramatically improved source of pairs of entangled photons, using a non
linear two photon laser excitation of atomic radiative cascades. The last part gives an
overview of the
experiments of third generation
, developped since the late 80’s, and
carried out with pairs of entangled photons produced in non linear parametric down
conversion: these experiments can close most of the loopholes still left open in the second
generation experiments. I am deliberately concentrating on optics experiments, since they
are
at
the
present
time
the
most
convincing and the closest to the ideal
GedankenExperiment, but the interested reader should be aware that other systems do
exist, in other domains of physics, that may offer the possibility to perform as convincing
experiments.
In the first part of this presentation (sections 2 to 6), we will see that Bell's
Inequalities provide a quantitative criterion to test « reasonable » Supplementary
Parameters Theories versus Quantum Mechanics. Following Bell, I will first explain the
motivations for considering supplementary parameters theories: the argument is based on
an analysis of the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Gedankenexperiment
3
.
Introducing a reasonable Locality Condition, we will then derive Bell's theorem, which
states:
i. that Local Supplementary Parameters Theories are constrained by Bell's Inequalities;
ii. that certain predictions of Quantum Mechanics violate Bell's Inequalities, and therefore
that Quantum Mechanics is incompatible with Local Supplementary Parameters
Theories.
We will then point out that a fundamental assumption for this conflict is the
Locality assumption
. And we will show that in a more sophisticated version of the E.P.R.
thought experiment (« timing experiment »), the Locality Condition may be considered a
consequence of Einstein's Causality
, preventing faster-than-light interactions.
The purpose of this first part is to convince the reader that the
formalism leading to
Bell's Inequalities is very general and reasonable
. What is
surprising
is that such a
reasonable formalism
conflicts with Quantum Mechanics
. In fact, situations exhibiting a
conflict are very rare
, and Quantum Optics is the domain where the most significant tests
of this conflict have been carried out (sections 7 to 11).
Bell Theorem naive view 18
3 / 34
Al
ain Aspect
2. WHY SUPPLEMENTARY PARAMETERS ? THE EINSTEIN-PODOLSKY-
ROSEN-BOHM GEDANKENEXPERIMENT
2.1. Experimental scheme
Let
us
consider
the
optical
variant
of
the
Bohm’s
version
4
of
the
E.P.R.
Gedankenexperiment (Fig. 1). A source
S
emits a pair of photons with different
frequencies
ν
1
and
ν
2
, counterpropagating along
Oz
. Suppose that the polarization part of
the state vector describing the pair is:
{
}
Ψ
(
,
)
,
,
ν
ν
1
2
1
2
=
+
x
x
y
y
(1)
where
x
and
y
are linear polarizations states. This state is remarkable : it cannot be
factorized into a product of two states associated to each photon, so we cannot ascribe any
well defined state to each photon. In particular, we cannot assign any polarization to each
photon. Such a state describing a system of several objects that can only be thought of
globally, is an
entangled state
.
We perform linear polarization measurements on the two photons, with analysers
I
and
II
. The analyser
I
, in orientation
a
, is followed by two detectors, giving results + or
−
,
corresponding to a linear polarization found parallel or perpendicular to
a
. The analyser
II
,
in orientation
b
, acts similarly
‡
.
Figure 1. Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-Bohm Gedankenexperiment with photons
. The two
photons
ν
1
and
ν
2
, emitted in the state
Ψ
(
,
)
1
2
of Equation (1), are analyzed by linear
polarizers in orientations
a
and
b
. One can measure the probabilities of single or joint
detections in the output channels of the polarizers.
It is easy to derive the Quantum Mechanical predictions for these measurements of
polarization, single or in coincidence. Consider first the singles probabilities
P
±
(
)
a
of
getting the results
±
for the photon
ν
1
, and similarly, the singles probabilities
P
±
(
)
b
of
obtaining the results
±
on photon
ν
2
. Quantum Mechanics predicts:
‡
There is a one-to-one correspondance with the EPR Bohm Gedankenexperiment dealing with a pair of spin
1/2 particles, in a singlet state, analysed by two orientable Stern-Gerlach filters.
+
−
+
−
ν
1
ν
2
I
a
b
II
S
z
x
y
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