Bell's Theorem and the Causal Arrow of Time

Abstract

Einstein held that the formalism of Quantum Mechanics (QM) entails "spooky actions at a distance". Indeed, in the 60's Bell showed that the predictions of QM disagree with the results of any locally causal description. Accepting non-local descriptions while retaining causality leads to a clash with the theory of relativity. Furthermore, the causal arrow of time by definition contradicts time-reversal symmetry. For these reasons, some authors (Feynman and Wheeler, Costa de Beauregard, Cramer, Price) have advocated abandoning microscopic causality. In the present article, a simplistic but concrete example of following this line of thought is presented, in the form of a retro-causal toy-model which is stochastic and which provides an appealing description of the specific quantum correlations discussed by Bell. One concludes that Einstein's "spooky actions" may occur "in the past" rather than "at a distance", resolving the tension between QM and relativity, and opening unexplored possibilities for future reformulations of QM.

Extensive changes. Conditionally accepted by American Journal of Physics

References in corpus (6)

• Experimental quantum teleportation
• Information Causality as a Physical Principle
• Against `Realism'
• From Einstein's Theorem to Bell's Theorem: A History of Quantum Nonlocality
• Toy Models for Retrocausality
• The EPR paradox, Bell's inequality, and the question of locality

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• Quantifying causal influences in the presence of a quantum common cause
• Measurement-dependence cost for Bell nonlocality: causal vs retrocausal models
• A Toy Model for Local and Deterministic Wave-function Collapse
• Quantum mechanics as a statistical description of classical electrodynamics
• Unit Quaternions and the Bloch Sphere
• Time evolution with symmetric stochastic action
• Lorentz-invariant, retrocausal, and deterministic hidden variables
• A Lenient Causal Arrow of Time?
• A representation of the wave function on the three-dimensional space
• Tackling Loopholes in Experimental Tests of Bell's Inequality
• A Bi-Directional Big Bang / Crunch Universe within a Two-State-Vector Quantum Mechanics?
• An Elementary Proof That Everett's Quantum Multiverse Is Nonlocal: Bell-Locality and Branch-Symmetry in the Many-Worlds Interpretation
• Causal Classical Physics in Time Symmetric Quantum Mechanics
• Study of entanglement via a multi-agent dynamical quantum game
• Forward-backward stochastic simulations: Q-based model for measurement and Bell-nonlocality consistent with weak local realistic premises
• Quantum Computation and Arrows of Time