The Communication Loophole and its Remedy The derivations of all the variants of Bell's Inequality depend upon

the two Ind ependence Conditions (8a,b) and (9a,b). Experimental data that disagree with a B ell's Inequality are not a refutation unless these Conditions are satisfied by t he experimental arrangement. In the early tests of Bell's Inequalities it was pl ausible that these Conditions were satisfied just because the 1 and the 2 arms o f experiment were spatially well separated in the laboratory frame of reference. This satisfaction, however, is a mere contingency not guaranteed by any law of physics, and hence it is physically possible that the setting of the analyzer of 1 and its detection or non-detection could influence the outcome of analysis an d the detection or non-detection of 2, and conversely. This is the communication loophole in the early Bell tests. If the process of analysis and detection of 1 w ere an event with space-like separation from the event consisting of the analysi s and detection of 2 then the satisfaction of the Independence Conditions would be a consequence of the Special Theory of Relativity, according to which no caus al influences can propagate with a velocity greater than the velocity of light i n vacuo. Several experiments of increasing sophistication between 1982 and the p resent have attempted to block the Communication Loophole in this way. Aspect, Dalibard, and Roger (1982) published the results of an experiment in whi ch the choices of the orientations of the analyzers of photons 1 and 2 were perf ormed so rapidly that they were events with space-like separation. No physical m odification was made of the analyzers themselves. Instead, switches consisting o f vials of water in which standing waves were excited ultrasonically were placed in the paths of the photons 1 and 2. When the wave is switched off, the photon propagates in the zeroth order of diffraction to polarization analyzers respecti vely oriented at angles a and b, and when it is switched on the photons propagat e in the first order of diffraction to polarization analyzers respectively orien ted at angles a and b. The complete choices of orientation require time intervals 6.7 ns and 13.37 ns respectively, much smaller than the 43 ns required for a sig nal to travel between the switches in obedience to Special Relativity Theory. Pr ima facie it is reasonable that the Independence Conditions are satisfied, and t herefore that the coincidence counting rates agreeing with the quantum mechanica l predictions constitute a refutation of Bell's Inequality and hence of the fami ly of Local Realistic Theories. There are, however, several imperfections in the experiment. First of all, the choices of orientations of the analyzers are not random, but are governed by quasiperiodic establishment and removal of the stand ing acoustical waves in each switch. A scenario can be invented according to whi ch the clever hidden variables of each analyzer can inductively infer the choice made by the switch controlling the other analyzer and adjust accordingly its de cision to transmit or to block an incident photon. Also coincident count technol ogy is employed for detecting joint transmission of 1 and 2 through their respec tive analyzers, and this technology establishes an electronic link which could i nfluence detection rates. And because of the finite size of the apertures of the switches there is a spread of the angles of incidence about the Bragg angles, r esulting in a loss of control of the directions of a non-negligible percentage o f the outgoing photons. The experiment of Tittel, Brendel, Zbinden, and Gisin (1998) did not directly ad dress the communication loophole but threw some light indirectly on this questio n and also provided the most dramatic evidence so far concerning the maintenance of entanglement between particles of a pair that are well separated. Pairs of p hotons were generated in Geneva and transmitted via cables with very small proba bility per unit length of losing the photons to two analyzing stations in suburb s of Geneva, located 10.9 kilometers apart on a great circle. The counting rates agreed well with the predictions of Quantum Mechanics and violated one of Bell' s Inequalities. No precautions were taken to ensure that the choices of orientat ions of the two analyzers were events with space-like separation. The great dist ance between the two analyzing stations makes it difficult to conceive a plausib

le scenario for a conspiracy that would violate Bell's Independence Conditions. Furthermore and this is the feature which seems most to have captured the imagin ation of physicists this experiment achieved much greater separation of the anal yzers than ever before, thereby providing the best reply to date to a conjecture by Schrdinger (1935) that entanglement is a property that may dwindle with spati al separation. The experiment that comes closest so far to closing the Communication Loophole i s that of Weihs, Jennenwein, Simon, Weinfurter, and Zeilinger (1998). The pairs of systems used to test a Bell's Inequality are photon pairs in the entangled po larization state (48) |> = 1/2 (|H>1 |V>2 |V>1 |H>2), where the ket |H> represents horizontal polarization and |V> represents vertical polarization. Each photon pair is produced from a photon of a laser beam by the down-conversion process in a nonlinear crystal. The momenta, and therefore the directions, of the daughter photons are strictly correlated, which ensures that a non-negligible proportion of the pairs jointly enter the apertures (very small ) of two optical fibers, as was also achieved in the experiment of Tittel et al. The two stations to which the photon pairs are delivered are 400 m apart, a dis tance which light in vacuo traverses in 1.3 s. Each photon emerging from an optic al fiber enters a fixed two-channel polarizer (i.e., its exit channels are the o rdinary ray and the extraordinary ray). Upstream from each polarizer is an elect ro-optic modulator, which causes a rotation of the polarization of a traversing photon by an angle proportional to the voltage applied to the modulator. Each mo dulator is controlled by amplification from a very rapid generator, which random ly causes one of two rotations of the polarization of the traversing photon. An essential feature of the experimental arrangement is that the generators applied to photons 1 and 2 are electronically independent. The rotations of the polariz ations of 1 and 2 are effectively the same as randomly and rapidly rotating the polarizer entered by 1 between two possible orientations a and a and the polarize r entered by 2 between two possible orientations b and b. The output from each of the two exit channels of each polarizer goes to a separate detector, and a time tag is attached to each detected photon by means of an atomic clock. Coincidence counting is done after all the detections are collected by comparing the time ta gs and retaining for the experimental statistics only those pairs whose tags are sufficiently close to each other to indicate a common origin in a single down-c onversion process. Accidental coincidences will also enter, but these are calcul ated to be relatively infrequent. This procedure of coincidence counting elimina tes the electronic connection between the detector of 1 and the detector of 2 wh ile detection is taking place, which conceivably could cause an error-generating transfer of information between the two stations. The total time for all the el ectronic and optical processes in the path of each photon, including the random generator, the electro-optic modulator, and the detector, is conservatively calc ulated to be smaller than 100 ns, which is much less than the 1.3 s required for a light signal between the two stations. With the choice made in Eq. (22) of the angles a, a, b, and b and with imperfections in the detectors taken into account, the Quantum Mechanical prediction is (49) S E(a,b ) + E(a,b) + E(a,b ) E(a,b) = 2.82, which is 0.82 greater than the upper limit allowed by the BCHSH Ineq. (16). The experimental result in the experiment of Weihs et al. is 2.73 +/- 0.02, in good agreement with the Quantum Mechanical prediction of Eq. (49), and it is 30 sd aw ay from the upper limit of Ineq. (16). Aspect, who designed the first experiment al test of a Bell Inequality with rapidly switched analyzers (Aspect, Dalibard, Roger 1982) appreciatively summarized the import of this result: I suggest we take the point of view of an external observer, who collects th

e data from the two distant stations at the end of the experiment, and compares the two series of results. This is what the Innsbruck team has done. Looking at the data a posteriori, they found that the correlation immediately changed as so on as one of the polarizers was switched, without any delay allowing for signal propagation: this reflects quantum non-separability. (Aspect 1999) The experiment of Weihs et al. does not completely block the detection loophole, and even if the experiment proposed by Fry and Walther is successfully complete d, it will still be the case that the detection loophole and the communication l oophole will have been blocked in two different experiments. It is therefore con ceivable though with difficulty, in the subjective judgment of the present write r that both experiments are erroneous, because Nature took advantage of a separa te loophole in each case. For this reason Fry and Walther suggest that their exp eriment using dissociated mercury dimers can in principle be refined by using el ectro-optic modulators (EOM), so as to block both loopholes: Specifically, the EO M together with a beam splitting polarizer can, in a couple of nanoseconds, chan ge the propagation direction of the excitation laser beam and hence the componen t of nuclear spin angular momentum being observed. A separation between our dete ctors of approximately 12 m will be necessary in order to close the locality loo phole (Fry & Walther 2002) [See Fig. 2 and also note that locality loophole is thei r term for the communication loophole.] In the face of the spectacular experimental achievement of Weihs et al. and the anticipated result of the experiment of Fry and Walther there is little that a d etermined advocate of local realistic theories can say except that, despite the spacelike separation of the analysis-detection events involving particles 1 and 2, the backward light-cones of these two events overlap, and it is conceivable t hat some controlling factor in the overlap region is responsible for a conspirac y affecting their outcomes. There is so little physical detail in this suppositi on that a discussion of it is best delayed until a methodological discussion in Section 7.