Hidden Variable Theories: Arguments for a Paradigm Shift

Abstract: Usually the 'hidden variables' of Bell's theorem are supposed to describe the pair of Bell particles. Here a semantic shift is proposed, namely to attach the hidden variables to a stochastic medium or field in which the particles move. It appears that under certain conditions one of the premises of Bell's theorem, namely 'measurement independence', is not satisfied for such 'background-based' theories, even if these only involve local interactions. Such theories therefore do not fall under the restriction of Bell's no-go theorem. A simple version of such background-based models are Ising models, which we investigate here in the classical and quantum regime. We also propose to test background-based models by a straightforward extension of existing experiments. The present version corrects an error in the preceding version.