INTRODUCTION

Fine (1982) proved that Bell's (1964) inequalities are sufficient, as well as necessary, to guarantee the existence of a joint probability distribution of the random variables in question, e.g., those representing certain spin correlation experiments. Garg and Mermin (1982) gave an example of eight random variables satisfying Bell's inequalities but such that no joint distribution exists.

The purpose of this paper is to extend Bell's inequalities to obtain some general necessary conditions for the existence of a joint probability distribution for any finite collection of Bell-type random variables. Our results show that, for N > 4, many new elementary inequalities beyond those of Bell must be satisfied by any hidden-variable theory. Since these additional inequalities are violated by quantum mechanical predictions for appropriate choice of measurement arrangements, they serve to increase the conceptual distance between what may be called Einstein locality, after the EPR paradox, and quantum mechanics.

To give a concrete sense of the nature of our results, we exhibit one of the new inequalities violated by Garg and Mermin's example. For theoretical purposes it will suffice to introduce Bell-type random variables X1,…, XN, N ≥ 4, having possible values ±1, with means E(Xi) = 0 and with what we term Bell covariances E(XiXj) relative to the index i0, with 1 ≤ i ≤ i0, N, 2 ≤ i0N – 2. Notice that, when N = 4, we must, as is familiar, have i0 = 2.