The Franson Experiment as an Example of Spontaneous Breaking of Time-Translation Symmetry
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The paper is quite interesting. I am not very interested in fundamental problems of quantum mechanics, however I read the paper with interest. This discussion can be instructive for many readers. Looking for corresponding discussion in scientific literature, I recognized the review Belinskii A V, Klyshko D N “Interference of light and Bell’s theorem” Phys. Usp. 36 (8) 653–693 (1993); DOI: 10.1070/PU1993v036n08ABEH002299
which may be a reasonable citation in the paper as it gives a general descriptiuon of the ideas of such kind.
Speaking about English quality, I recognized that the author uses Futurum (In this paper I shall do this and that) much more regular rather it is recommended by current tradition. My recommendation to write here useng Presence (Here I do this and that).
Speaking in general, I believe that the paper can be published after minimal revision.
Author Response
Dear Editor,
I wish to thank the referee for the interesting reference. I have now cited it appropriately.
Also, I wish to thank the referee for his kind suggestions about the English language and style, which I have tried to follow in the revised version of the manuscript.
Reviewer 2 Report
The author proposes a hidden variable model which is compatible with the Franson experiment. The model is well defined and seems to be consistent. However two questions should be clarified before the acceptance of the manuscript.
1. The discussion of the holonomy of Fig. 4 and its relation to the proposed model is unclear.
2. The wording "spontaneous breaking of time-translation gauge symmetry" is misleading. First, according to Elitzur (1975) "Impossibility of spontaneously breaking local symmetries", Phys. Rev. D. 12: 3978–3982, gauge symmetry can not be broken spontaneously. Only global symmetry can do it. Second, to argue about spontaneous symmetry breaking one needs infinitely many dynamical degrees of freedom distributed in infinitely large volume in order to decorrelate them. Where are these variables? In the absence of a spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism the author needs anisotropy in the hidden variable model, a rather unnatural feature.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
The Franson experiment is regarded as an alternative demonstration of the impossibility of describing
quantum phenomena within the framework of any local hidden variables model.
But, Aerts et al. proposed a local hidden variables model that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics for the ideal Franson experiment. The paper describe another local hidden variables model that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics for the ideal Franson experiment.
Maybe the paper could be well understood to specialists in this area, but for me, as an outsider it is hard to understand several points in the paper. Here is the list:
1 What is the reason and justification of formula (1)? At least it need a reference
- It is not clear why |c_2> represent "non-equal" outcomes?
- Where are the detectors D_A and D'_A in the experiment?
- Is there some reason for formula (13) except that it lead to the probabilities of QM?
- It is impossible to follow the derivation of p_1,p_2 after formula (24)
Thus, if the author wants to make the paper readable for a wide audience, He should add more details that will help to understand the results
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
The author has responded in a satisfactory manner and the paper is no ready to be published.
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript has been sufficiently improved to warrant publication in Symmetry.
