Cosmic primordial density fluctuations and Bell inequalities

TL;DR

This paper investigates whether cosmic microwave background fluctuations violate Bell inequalities, testing local realism using COBE and WMAP data, and finds no violation with COBE but suggests potential violations with more precise WMAP measurements.

Contribution

It introduces a novel application of Bell inequalities to cosmic microwave background data, connecting quantum foundations with cosmological observations.

Findings

COBE data does not violate CHSH inequalities.

No evidence of quantum nonlocality in COBE measurements.

Potential for violation with more precise WMAP data.

Abstract

The temperature measurements, $T$, of the perturbed cosmic microwave background, performed by the cosmic background explorer satellite (COBE), are considered. A dichotomist function, $f = \pm 1$, is defined such that $f =+1$ if $\delta T > 0$ and $f =-1$ if $\delta T < 0$, where $\delta T$ stands for the fluctuation of $T$. Then, it is assumed that behind the appearance of these fluctuations there is local realism. Under this assumption, some specific Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequalities are proved for these fluctuation temperatures measured by COBE in the different sky directions. The calculation of these inequalities from the actual temperature measurements shows that these inequalities are not violated. This result cannot be anticipated by calculating the commutators of the cosmic density quantum operators. This must be remarked here since, in the case of a system of two entangled spin ${\textstyle{1 \over 2}}$ particles, its CHSH inequalities violation can be inferred from the nonvanishing value of the corresponding spin measurement commutators. The above nonviolation of the observed cosmic CHSH inequalities is compatible with the existence of local realism behind the cosmic measurement results. Nevertheless, assuming again local realism, some new cosmic CHSH inequalities can be derived for the case of the WMAP measurements whose accuracy is better than the one of the above considered COBE measurements. More specifically, in the WMAP case, some significant cross correlations between the temperature and polarization maps are detected, and the new cosmic CHSH inequalities are the ones built with these cross correlations. Now, the occasional violation of these CHSH inequalities would mean the failure of the assumed local realism in accordance with the quantum origin of the primordial temperature and polarization fluctuations in the framework of standard inflation.