Why Bohmian Mechanics? one and two-time position measurements, Bell inequalities, philosophy and physics

TL;DR

This paper explores how Bohmian mechanics predicts Bell inequality violations through position measurements and macroscopic pointers, highlighting its philosophical appeal but limited acceptance among physicists.

Contribution

It demonstrates that Bohmian mechanics can account for Bell violations via position measurements and discusses the implications for macro-scale quantum phenomena.

Findings

Bohmian mechanics predicts Bell inequality violations with position measurements.

Position correlations in Bohmian mechanics are well-defined over two times.

The model explains violations using macroscopic pointers and surrealistic trajectories.

Abstract

In Bohmian mechanics particles follow continuous trajectories, hence 2-time position correlations are well defined. Nevertheless, Bohmian mechanics predicts the violation of Bell inequalities. Motivated by this fact we investigate position measurements in Bohmian mechanics by coupling the particles to macroscopic pointers. This explains the violation of Bell inequalities despite 2-time position correlations. We relate this fact to so-called surrealistic trajectories that, in our model, correspond to slowly moving pointers. Next, we emphasize that the nice feature of Bohmian mechanics, which doesn't distinguish microscopic and macroscopic systems, implies that the quantum weirdness of quantum physics also shows up at the macro-scale. Finally, we discuss the fact that Bohmian mechanics is attractive to philosophers, but not so much to physicists and argue that the Bohmian community is responsible for the latter.