On the meaning of an additional hypothesis in the Bell's inequalities

TL;DR

This paper examines an often-overlooked additional hypothesis in Bell's inequalities, suggesting its violation could explain experimental results without abandoning Local Realism, thus offering a new perspective on quantum foundations.

Contribution

It identifies and analyzes an additional hypothesis in Bell's inequalities, proposing it as a key factor in the debate between Quantum Mechanics and Local Realism.

Findings

The additional hypothesis can be violated in physically reasonable processes.

Violation of this hypothesis may account for Bell's inequality violations.

The paper provides a simple example illustrating this possibility.

Abstract

The Bell's inequalities are derived from the hypotheses of Locality, Realism and (what is lesser known) the equality between the factual and the counterfactual time averages of the expectation values of observables. The necessity of a hypothesis additional to Local Realism opens a promising way out to the old controversy between Quantum Mechanics and Local Realism. For, it is possible to speculate that it is this additional hypothesis, and not Local Realism, what is disproved in the experiments reporting the violation of the Bell's inequalities. Yet, there are doubts on how the additional hypothesis may be violated in a physically reasonable process. A simple example showing that this is possible, the relationship between the validity of the additional hypothesis and the validity of the Bell's inequalities, and considerations on its physical meaning, are presented.