Is the fair sampling assumption supported by EPR experiments?

Abstract

We analyse optical EPR experimental data performed by Weihs et al in Innsbruck 1997–1998. We show that for some linear combinations of the raw coincidence rates, the experimental results display some anomalous behaviour that a more general source state (like non-maximally entangled state) cannot straightforwardly account for. We attempt to explain these anomalies by taking account of the relative efficiencies of the four channels. For this purpose, we use the fair sampling assumption, and assume explicitly that the detection efficiencies for the pairs of entangled photons can be written as a product of the two corresponding detection efficiencies for the single photons. We show that this explicit use of fair sampling cannot be maintained to be a reasonable assumption as it leads to an apparent violation of the no-signalling principle.