Bell vs. Galileo: the proof of the inequality clashes with the principle of relativity


  David Oaknin  
Rafael Advanced Defense Systems

The Bell’s theorem stands as an insuperable roadblock in the path to a very desired intuitive solution of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox and, hence, it lies at the core of the current lack of a clear interpretation of the quantum formalism. The theorem states through an experimentally testable inequality that the predictions of quantum mechanics for the Bell’s polarization states of two entangled particles cannot be reproduced by any statistical model of hidden variables that shares certain intuitive features. The proof of the inequality, however, implicitly assumes a preferred frame of reference in which the orientations of the two detectors can be independently described: the proof does not hold when the experiments are described taking the orientation of one of the detectors as a reference direction. This observation suggests that the Bell's theorem can be overcome if the global rotational symmetry is spontaneously broken by the hidden configurations of the pair of entangled particles. Following this observation we build an explicit local model of hidden variables that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics for the Bell's states.