JenniT said:
I'm also sorry for the delay too.
But note that lambda has to deliver results at any combination of any angular settings; so OK; please go ahead and demonstrate the point. If it fails at 8, I guess you'd agree it fails at a countable infinity of angular settings also. Right?
Right, although any given Bell test will involve only a small number of possible angular settings for the experimenters to choose from, like the three possible settings 0, 60 and 120 that I assumed are available to Alice and Bob. Of course, it's arbitrary what set of angles we choose to make available, I just chose 0, 60 and 120 for convenience.
So, assume that on each trial Alice and Bob choose their settings randomly, and independently. Then in the limit as the number of trials goes to infinity, each possible combination of settings will occur equally frequently--for example (Alice:60, Bob:120) occurs on the same fraction of trials as (Alice:120, Bob:0).
On each trial, both particles have the same value for Li (for example on any trial where Alice's particle has a λ
k corresponding to L
5, Bob's particle also has a λ
k corresponding to L
5). This means that in the subset of trials where Alice and Bob both chose the
same detector setting, they always get the same measurement result with probability 1. But what if we look at the subset of trials where they chose
different settings, what is the probability they got the same measurement result in that case? Here we want the conditional probability that they get the same result given that they chose different settings, which we can write as P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings).
Now, under the type of hidden variables theory you are proposing, would you agree we can break this up into the following sum?
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings) =
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
1)*P(L
1) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
2)*P(L
2) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
3)*P(L
3) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
4)*P(L
4) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
5)*P(L
5) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
6)*P(L
6) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
7)*P(L
7) +
P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
8)*P(L
8)
If you agree this sum is valid, consider an individual term like P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
5). L
5 was 0-, 60+, 120+. Would you agree that since two predetermined results are + and one is -, the only way they can both get the same measurement result is if they both chose settings with predetermined result +? And would you agree that if we know Alice chose her setting randomly, there should be a 2/3 chance she chose a setting with predetermined result + (i.e. either 60 or 120), and if we know Bob also chose randomly and we are dealing with a trial where his setting was different from Alice's, there is a 1/2 chance he chose the other setting with predetermined result +? In other words, do you agree that P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
5) = (2/3)*(1/2) = 1/3? Another way of seeing this is just by considering all possible ways they can choose different settings, and what their results will be given particles in state L
5:
(Alice:0, Bob:60): different measurement results (Alice-, Bob+)
(Alice:0, Bob:120): different measurement results (Alice-, Bob+)
(Alice:60, Bob:0): different measurement results (Alice+, Bob-)
(Alice:60, Bob:120):
same measurement results (Alice+, Bob+)
(Alice:120, Bob:0) different measurement results (Alice+, Bob-)
(Alice:120, Bob:60)
same measurement results (Alice+, Bob+)
So, in 2 out of the 6 possible cases where they choose different settings, they get the same result, meaning P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
5) = 2/6 = 1/3.
If you agree with this, it's not hard to see why P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
2) would also equal 1/3 (since here you also have two + and one - for the predetermined results), and likewise for L
3, L
4, L
6 and L
7, which we might call the "inhomogenous states" since they each involve two predetermined results of one type and one of the other. On the other hand, for the "homogenous" states L
1 and L
8 where all three predetermined results are the same, then even if they choose different settings they are guaranteed to get the same result, so P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
1) = P(same measurement result | Alice&Bob chose different measurement settings AND L
8) = 1.
Let me know whether you agree with all of this so far, and if so I'll continue, if not I'll try to elaborate on whatever you're unclear about in the above.