In search of superluminal quantum communications: recent experiments and possible improvements

Abstract

As shown in the famous EPR paper (Einstein, Podolsky e Rosen, 1935), Quantum Mechanics is non-local. The Bell theorem and the experiments by Aspect and many others, ruled out the possibility of explaining quantum correlations between entangled particles using local hidden variables models (except for implausible combinations of loopholes). Some authors (Bell, Eberhard, Bohm and Hiley) suggested that quantum correlations could be due to superluminal communications (tachyons) that propagate isotropically with velocity v_t > c in a preferred reference frame. For finite values of v_t, Quantum Mechanics and superluminal models lead to different predictions. Some years ago a Geneva group and our group did experiments on entangled photons to evidence possible discrepancies between experimental results and quantum predictions. Since no discrepancy was found, these experiments established only lower bounds for the possible tachyon velocities v_t. Here we propose an improved experiment that should lead us to explore a much larger range of possible tachyon velocities V_t for any possible direction of velocity &vecV; of the tachyons preferred frame.