Experimental Tests of Bell's Inequalities When Bell published his pioneering paper in 1964 he did not urge an experimental

resolution of the conflict between Quantum Mechanics and Local Realistic Theori es, probably because the former had been confirmed often and precisely in many b ranches of physics. It was doubtful, however, that any of these many confirmations occurred in situa tions of conflict between Quantum Mechanics and Local Realistic Theories, and th erefore a reliable experimental adjudication was desirable. A proposal to this e ffect was made by Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt (1969), henceforth CHSH, who suggested that the pairs 1 and 2 be the photons produced in an atomic cascade f rom an initial atomic state with total angular momentum J = 0 to an intermediate atomic state with J = 1 to a final atomic state J = 0, as in an experiment perf ormed with calcium vapor for other purposes by Kocher and Commins (1967). This a rrangement has several advantages: first, by conservation of angular momentum th e photon pair emitted in the cascade has total angular momentum 0, and if the ph otons are collected in cones of small aperture along the z-direction the total o rbital angular momentum is small, with the consequence that the total spin (or p olarization) angular momentum is close to 0 and therefore the polarizations of t he two photons are tightly correlated; second, the photons are in the visible fr equency range and hence susceptible to quite accurate polarization analysis with standard polarization analyzers; and third, the stochastic interval between the time of emission of the first photon and the time of emission of the second is in the range of 10 nsec., which is small compared to the average time between tw o productions of pairs, and therefore the associated photons 1 and 2 of a pair a re almost unequivocally matched. A disadvantage of this arrangement, however, is that photo-detectors in the relevant frequency range are not very efficient les s than 20% efficency for single photons and hence less that 4% efficient for det ection of a pair and therefore an auxiliary assumption is needed in order to mak e inferences from the statistics of the subensemble of the pairs that is counted to the entire ensemble of pairs emitted during the period of observation. (This disadvantage causes a detection loophole which prevents the experiment, and other s like it, from being decisive, but procedures for blocking this loophole are at present being investigated actively and will be discussed in Section 4). In the experiment proposed by CHSH the measurements are polarization analyses wi th the transmission axis of analyzer I oriented at angles a and a, and the transm ission axis of analyzer II oriented at angles b and b. The results s = 1 and s = 1 respectively designate passage and non-passage of photon 1 through analyzer I, and t = 1 and t = 1 respectively designate passage and non-passage of photon 2 th rough analyzer II. Non-passage through the analyzer is thus substituted for pass age into the extraordinary ray. This simplification of the apparatus causes an o bvious problem: that it is impossible to discriminate directly between a photon that fails to pass through the analyzer and one which does pass through the anal yzer but is not detected because of the inefficiency of the photo-detectors. CHS H dealt with this problem in two steps. First, they expressed the probabilities p(s,t |a,b ), where either s or t (or both) is 1 as follows: (25a) p(1,1|a,b ) = p(1,1|a,) p(1,1|a,b ), whee replacing b designates the removal of the analyzer from the path of 2. Lik ewise (25b) p(1,1|a,b ) = p(1,1|,b ) p(1,1|a,b ), whee analyzer II is oriented at angle b and replacing a designates removal of t he analyzer I from the path of photon 1; and finally (25c) p(1,1|a,b ) = 1 p(1,1|a,b ) p(1,1|a,b ) p(1,1|a,b ) = 1 p(1,1|a,

Thei second step is to make the fair sampling assumption: given that a pair of ph otons enters the pair of rays associated with passage through the polarization a nalyzers, the probability of their joint detection is independent of the orienta tion of the analyzers (including the quasi-orientation which designates removal) . With this assumption, together with the assumptions that the local realistic e xpressions p(s,t |a,b ) correctly evaluate the probabilities of the results of polari zation analyses of the photon pair (1,2), we can express these probabilities in terms of detection rates: (26a) p(1,1|a,b ) = D(a,b )/D0 where D(a,b ) is the counting rate of pairs when the transmission axes of analyzer s I and II are oriented respectively at angles a and b, and D0 is the detection rate when both analyzers are removed from the paths of photons 1 and 2; (26b) p(1,1|a,) = D1(a,)/D0, where D1(a,) is the counting rate of pairs when analyzer I is oriented at angle a while analyzer II is removed; and (26c) p(1,1|,b ) = D2(,b )/D0, where D2(,b ) is the counting rate when analyzer II is oriented at angle b while an alyzer I is removed. When Ineq. (16) is combined with Eq. (15b) and with Eqs (26 a,b,c) relating probabilities to detection rates, the result is an inequality go verning detection rates,

(27) 1 D(a,b )/D0 + D(a,b)/D0 + D(a,b )/D0 D(a,b)/D0 [D1(a)/D 0 + D2(b )/D0 ] (In (27), D1(a) is an abbreviation for D(a,), and D2(b) is an abbreviation for D(, b).) If the following symmetry conditions are satisfied by the experiment: (28) D(a,b ) = D(|ba |), (29) D1(a ) = D1, independent of a; (30) D2(b ) = D2, independent of b, one can rewrite Ineq. (27) as

(31) 1 D(|ba |)/D0 + D(|ba|)/D0 + D(|ba|)/D0 D(|ba|)/D0 [D1/D0 + D2/D0] The first experimental test of Bell's Inequality, performed by Freedman and Clau ser (1972), proceeded by making two applications of Ineq. (31), one to the angle s a = /4, a = 0, b = /8, b = 3/8, yielding (32a) 1 [3D(/8)/D0 D(3/8)/D0 ] D1/D0 D2/D0 0, and another to the angles a = 3/4, a = 0, b = 3/8, b = 9/8, yielding (32b) 1 [3D(3/8)/D0 D(/8)/D0 ] D1/D0 D2/D0 0. Combining Ineq. (32a) and Ineq. (32b) yields (33) () [D(/8 )/D0 D(3/8)/D0 ] . The Quantum Mechanical prediction for this arrangement, taking into account the

uncertainties about the polarization analyzers and the angle from the source sub tended by the analyzers, is (34) [D(/8)/D0 D(3/8)/D0 ]QM = (0.401+/-0.005) (0.100+/-0.005) = 0.301+/-0.007 , The experimental result obtained by Freedman and Clauser was (35) [D(/8)/D0 D(3/8)/D0 ]expt = 0.300 +/- 0.008, which is 6.5 sd from the limit allowed by Ineq. (33) but in good agreement with the quantum mechanical prediction Eq. (34). This was a difficult experiment, req uiring 200 hours of running time, much longer than in most later tests of Bell's Inequality, which were able to use lasers for exciting the sources of photon pa irs. Several dozen experiments have been performed to test Bell's Inequalities. Refer ences will now be given to some of the most noteworthy of these, along with refe rences to survey articles which provide information about others. A discussion o f those actual or proposed experiments which were designed to close two serious loopholes in the early Bell experiments, the detection loophole and the communicati on loophole, will be reserved for Section 4 and Section 5. Holt and Pipkin completed in 1973 (Holt 1973) an experiment very much like that of Freedman and Clauser, but examining photon pairs produced in the 91P1 73S163P 0 cascade in the zero nuclear-spin isotope of mercury-198 after using electron bo mbardment to pump the atoms to the first state in this cascade. The result of Ho lt and Pipkin was in fairly good agreement with Ineq. (33), which is a consequen ce of the BCHSH Inequality, and in disagreement with the quantum mechanical pred iction by nearly 4 sd contrary to the results of Freedman and Clauser. Because o f the discrepancy between these two early experiments Clauser (1976) repeated th e Holt-Pipkin experiment, using the same cascade and excitation method but a dif ferent spin-0 isotope of mercury, and his results agreed well with the quantum m echanical predictions but violated the consequence of Bell's Inequality. Clauser also suggested a possible explanation for the anomalous result of Holt-Pipkin: that the glass of the Pyrex bulb containing the mercury vapor was under stress a nd hence was optically active, thereby giving rise to erroneous determinations o f the polarizations of the cascade photons. Fry and Thompson (1976) also performed a variant of the Holt-Pipkin experiment, using a different isotope of mercury and a different cascade and exciting the at oms by radiation from a narrow-bandwith tunable dye laser. Their results also ag reed well with the quantum mechanical predictions and disagreed sharply with Bel l's Inequality. They gathered data in only 80 minutes, as a result of the high e xcitation rate achieved by the laser. Four experiments in the 1970s by Kasday-Ullman-Wu, Faraci-Gutkowski-Notarigo-Pen nisi, Wilson-Lowe-Butt, and Bruno-dAgostinoMaoni used photon pairs produced in positronium annihilation instead of cascade photons. Of these, all but that of F araci et al. gave results in good agreement with the quantum mechanical predicti ons and in disagreement with Bell's Inequalities. A discussion of these experime nts is given in the review article by Clauser and Shimony (1978), who regard the m as less convincing than those using cascade photons, because they rely upon st ronger auxiliary assumptions. The first experiment using polarization analyzers with two exit channels, thus r ealizing the theoretical scheme in the third step of the argument for Bell's The orem in Section 2, was performed in the early 1980s with cascade photons from la ser-excited calcium atoms by Aspect, Grangier, and Roger (1982). The outcome con firmed the predictions of quantum mechanics over those of local realistic theori

es more dramatically than any of its predecessors with the experimental result d eviating from the upper limit in a Bell's Inequality by 40 sd. An experiment soo n afterwards by Aspect, Dalibard, and Roger (1982), which aimed at closing the c ommunication loophole, will be discussed in Section 5. The historical article by Aspect (1992) reviews these experiments and also surveys experiments performed by Shih and Alley, by Ou and Mandel, by Rarity and Tapster, and by others, using photon pairs with correlated linear momenta produced by down-conversion in nonlinear crystals. Some even more recent Bell tests are reported in an article on experiments and the foundations of quantum physics by Zeilinger (1999). Pairs of photons have been the most common physical systems in Bell tests becaus e they are relatively easy to produce and analyze, but there have been experimen ts using other systems. Lamehi-Rachti and Mittig (1976) measured spin correlatio ns in proton pairs prepared by low-energy scattering. Their results agreed well with the quantum mechanical prediction and violated Bell's Inequality, but stron g auxiliary assumptions had to be made like those in the positronium annihilatio n experiments. In 2003 a Bell test was performed at CERN by A. Go (Go 2003) with B-mesons, and again the results favored the quantum mechanical predictions. The outcomes of the Bell tests provide dramatic confirmations of the prima facie entanglement of many quantum states of systems consisting of 2 or more constitu ents, and hence of the existence of holism in physics at a fundamental level. Ac tually, the first confirmation of entanglement and holism antedated Bell's work, since Bohm and Aharonov (1957) demonstrated that the results of Wu and Shaknov (1950), Compton scattering of the photon pairs produced in positronium annihilat ion, already showed the entanglement of the photon pairs.