1104.0091 (Gerd Niestegge)

Three-slit experiments and quantum nonlocality - The absence of
3rd-order interference implies Tsirelson's bound    [PDF]

Gerd Niestegge

An interesting link between two very different physical aspects of quantum mechanics is revealed; these are the absence of third-order interference and Tsirelson's bound for the nonlocal correlations. Considering multiple-slit experiments - not only the traditional configuration with two slits, but also configurations with three and more slits - Sorkin detected that third-order (and higher-order) interference is not possible in quantum mechanics. The EPR experiments show that quantum mechanics involves nonlocal correlations which are demonstrated in a violation of the Bell or CHSH inequality, but are still limited by a bound discovered by Tsirelson. It now turns out that Tsirelson's bound holds in almost any other probabilistic theory provided that a reasonable calculus of conditional probability is included and third-order interference is ruled out.

View original: http://arxiv.org/abs/1104.0091