Antony Valentini signal nonlocality in cosmological data? 2

Valentini thinks the low power anomaly at wide angles in the WMAP cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuation data may be evidence of signal nonlocality in the pre-inflation false vacuum - this would be a violation of orthodox quantum theory.

It may be shown that quantum nonequilibrium for entangled systems leads to nonlocal signals at the statistical level, in pilot-wave theory (as already mentioned) and indeed in any deterministic hidden-variables theory; while in equilibrium, the under- lying nonlocal effects cancel out at the statistical level [14,15,18,19,26]. Locality is therefore a contingency (or emergent feature) of the equilibrium state. Similarly, standard uncertainty-principle limitations on measurements are also contingencies of equilibrium [14,15,20,24]. These results provide an explanation for the otherwise mysterious ‘‘conspiracy’’ in the foundations of current physics, according to which (roughly speaking) quantum noise and the uncertainty principle prevent us from using quantum nonlocality for practical nonlocal signaling. From the above perspective, this ‘‘conspiracy’’ is not part of the laws of physics, but merely a contingent feature of the equilibrium state (much as the inability to convert heat into work, in a state of global thermal equilibrium, is not a law of physics but a contingency of the state). On this view, quantum physics is merely the effective description of a particular state—just as, for example, the standard model of particle physics is merely the effective description of (perturbations around) a particular vacuum state (arising from spontaneous symmetry breaking). If one takes this view seriously, it suggests that nonequilibrium phenomena should exist somewhere (or some time) in our Universe. And again, the early Universe seems the natural place to look. -- Valentini

In the case of particle mechanics (for simplicity), the hidden variables are the particle positions on some spacelike hypersurface. Clearly if these particles are pumped they are kept off thermal equilibrium and should show signal nonlocality with statistical behavior violating the Born rule. Valentini only considers closed systems without any external pump. Furthermore, if these particles are in a Bose-Einstein condensate, the macro-quantum coherent phase rigidity will definitely cause large departures away from the statistical predictions of ordinary quantum theory in which these same particles are independent forming an ensemble.