Buonomano against Bell: Nonergodicity or nonlocality?

Abstract

The aim of this note is to attract attention of the quantum foundational community to the fact that in Bell's arguments one can not distinguish two hypotheses: a) quantum mechanics is {\it nonlocal}, b) quantum mechanics is {\it nonergodic.} Therefore experimental violations of Bell's inequality can be as well interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that stochastic processes induced by quantum measurements are nonergodic. The latter hypothesis was discussed actively by Buonomano since 1980th. However, in contrast to Bell's hypothesis on nonlocality it did not attract so much attention. The only experiment testing the hypothesis on nonergodicity was performed in neutron interferometry (by Summhammer, in 1989). This experiment can be considered as rejecting this hypothesis. However, it cannot be considered as a decisive experiment. New experiments are badly needed. We point out that a nonergodic model can be realistic, i.e., the distribution of hidden (local!) variables is well defined. We also discuss coupling of violation of the Bell inequality with violation of the condition of weak mixing for ergodic dynamical systems.