About a "nonlocal" local model considered by L. Vervoort, and the necessity to distinguish locality from Einstein locality

TL;DR

The paper critiques Vervoort's claim of a local model violating Bell inequalities, clarifying that the model involves global elements and emphasizing the importance of distinguishing Einstein locality from general locality.

Contribution

It clarifies the distinction between Einstein locality and general locality, and critiques claims of local models reproducing quantum correlations without superluminal influences.

Findings

Vervoort's model contains global elements and is not purely local.

The model cannot violate Bell inequalities without a preferred frame.

The paper advocates for abandoning the synonymy of 'local' with 'Einstein-local'.

Abstract

L. Vervoort [arxiv:1406.0901] claims to have found a model which "can violate the Bell inequality and reproduce the quantum statistics, even if it is based on local dynamics only". This claim is false. The proposed model contains global elements. The physics behind the model is local, but would not allow the explanation of violations of Bell inequalities for space-like separated events, if superluminal causal influences are forbidden. To use it for this purpose, one has to introduce a preferred frame where information can be send faster than light. As a cause of the misunderstanding we identify the unfortunate convention to use "local" as a synonym for Einstein-local, so that theories which are local in every physically relevant sense have to be named "non-local", and argue that this convention should be abandoned.