A relational critique of Bell locality
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arXiv
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| author | van Neerven, Jan Waaijer, Marijn |
| author_facet | van Neerven, Jan Waaijer, Marijn |
| contents | This paper provides a systematic analysis of Bell experiments from the relational perspective, demonstrating that the apparent ``nonlocality'' of quantum mechanics stems from a problematic application of relativistic principles rather than mysterious space-like influences. We show that when Bell experiments are properly analysed through individual observer accounts, all measurements remain strictly local. Alice's and Bob's local measurements can be fully understood in terms of variables from their backward light cones, satisfying relativistic causality. Correlations emerge only in the global perspective of an external observer Charlie when analyzing joint measurement statistics -- a physical situation different from the individual space-like separated measurements to which Bell's locality condition was originally applied.
Our central contribution is identifying a conceptual shortcoming in Bell's argument, namely, the illegitimate extension of local independence principles from individual measurements to correlation measurements. The fact that space-like separated events cannot causally influence each other does not justify requiring statistical independence in global correlation analyses. Motivated by the formalism developed in the companion paper \cite{NeeWaa-indisc}, we arrive at the construction of an explicit classical probability model that reproduces all the experimental results of the Bell experiment, including the violation of the CHSH inequality $S\leq2$. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08487 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | A relational critique of Bell locality van Neerven, Jan Waaijer, Marijn Quantum Physics 81P05, 81P16 This paper provides a systematic analysis of Bell experiments from the relational perspective, demonstrating that the apparent ``nonlocality'' of quantum mechanics stems from a problematic application of relativistic principles rather than mysterious space-like influences. We show that when Bell experiments are properly analysed through individual observer accounts, all measurements remain strictly local. Alice's and Bob's local measurements can be fully understood in terms of variables from their backward light cones, satisfying relativistic causality. Correlations emerge only in the global perspective of an external observer Charlie when analyzing joint measurement statistics -- a physical situation different from the individual space-like separated measurements to which Bell's locality condition was originally applied. Our central contribution is identifying a conceptual shortcoming in Bell's argument, namely, the illegitimate extension of local independence principles from individual measurements to correlation measurements. The fact that space-like separated events cannot causally influence each other does not justify requiring statistical independence in global correlation analyses. Motivated by the formalism developed in the companion paper \cite{NeeWaa-indisc}, we arrive at the construction of an explicit classical probability model that reproduces all the experimental results of the Bell experiment, including the violation of the CHSH inequality $S\leq2$. |
| title | A relational critique of Bell locality |
| topic | Quantum Physics 81P05, 81P16 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08487 |