Superluminal hidden communication as the underlying mechanism for quantum correlations: constraining models

Since Bell's theorem, it is known that quantum correlations cannot be described by local variables (LV) alone: if one does not want to abandon classical mechanisms for correlations, a superluminal form of communication among the particles must be postulated. A natural question is whether such a postulate would imply the possibility of superluminal signaling. Here we show that the assumption of finite-speed superluminal communication indeed leads to signaling when no LV are present, and more generally when only LV derivable from quantum statistics are allowed. When the most general LV are allowed, we prove in a specific case that the model can be made again consistent with relativity, but the question remains open in general.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure. For the Proceedings of the Conference DICE 2004 (Piombino, 1-4 Sept. 2004

Coexistence of Quantum Theory and Special Relativity in signaling scenarios

The coexistence between Quantum Mechanics and Special Relativity is usually formulated in terms of the no-signaling condition. Several authors have even suggested that this condition should be included between the basic postulates of Quantum Theory. However, there are several scenarios where signaling is, in principle, possible: based on previous results and the analysis of the relation between unitarity and signaling we present an example of a two-particle interferometric arrangement for which the dynamics is, in principle, compatible with superluminal transmission of information. This type of non-locality is not in the line of Bell's theorem, but closer in spirit to the one-particle acausality studied by Hegerfeldt and others. We analyze in this paper the meaning of this non-locality and how to preserve the coexistence of the two fundamental theories in this signaling scenario.Comment: See also the comment by G C Hegerfeldt in the online version of the journal, including more reference