Experimental Bound on the Maximum Predictive Power of Physical Theories

Terence E. Stuart, Joshua A. Slater, Roger Colbeck, Renato Renner, and Wolfgang Tittel
Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 020402 – Published 9 July 2012
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Abstract

The question of whether the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanical predictions can be alleviated by supplementing the wave function with additional information has received a lot of attention during the past century. A few specific models have been suggested and subsequently falsified. Here we give a more general answer to this question: We provide experimental data that, as well as falsifying these models, cannot be explained within any alternative theory that could predict the outcomes of measurements on maximally entangled particles with significantly higher probability than quantum theory. Our conclusion is based on the assumptions that all measurement settings have been chosen freely (within a causal structure compatible with relativity theory), and that the presence of the detection loophole did not affect the measurement outcomes.

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  • Received 25 March 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.020402

© 2012 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Terence E. Stuart1, Joshua A. Slater1, Roger Colbeck2,3, Renato Renner2, and Wolfgang Tittel1

  • 1Institute for Quantum Information Science and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta T2N 1N4, Canada
  • 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
  • 3Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo, Ontario N2L 2Y5, Canada

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Issue

Vol. 109, Iss. 2 — 13 July 2012

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