The Franson experiment as an example of spontaneous breaking of time-translation symmetry

Abstract

We describe an explicit statistical model of local hidden variables that reproduces the predictions of quantum mechanics for the ideal Franson experiment and sheds light on the physical mechanisms that might be involved in the actual experiment. The crux of our model is the spontaneous breaking of the time-translation gauge symmetry by the hidden configurations of the pairs of photons locked in time and energy involved in the experiment, which acquire a non-zero geometric phase through certain cyclic transformations.