Further Investigations of the Aspect/Bell Error: Maximum Entropy Assessment

Abstract

This article identifies the maximum entropy distribution among those in the polytope of probability distributions cohering with quantum theoretic prescriptions pertinent to Bell’s inequality in the optical context. Perhaps surprisingly, the maxent distribution is not a uniform mixture of the extreme vertices of the convex hull of distributions agreeing with the theory. The expectation E ( s ) it supports equals 1.1296, within the permitted coherent interval of (1.1213,2] . The maxent mixture of the extreme agreeable vertices is compared herein with two other mixture distributions over the convex hull of those supported by quantum theory. One of these is a simple uniform mixture over the solution vectors to the appropriate linear programming problems that specify the polytope. The other is the mixture underlying simulated results of Aspect’s experiments that have been shown to estimate E ( s ) as 1.7678. Further computations provide examples of the types of claims that would be entailed in a unique distribution within the cohering convex hull such as maxent. These defy quantum theoretic adherence to the general uncertainty principle which proclaims an agnostic position with respect to imagined joint observation operators that do not commute. They also display questionable implications of the “many worlds” proposal which the author does not favour. The article raises questions that deserve to be discussed concerning the general proposal that the maximum entropy principle should be employed to make precise probabilistic assertions about equilibrium phenomena when specific physical theory prescribes only an interval.