A New Perspective on Malus and Bell

Malus’s law and the correlations of Bell-type experiments yield the same curve, the squared cosine of the angular offset between two polarizers. We propose a reinterpretation of both phenomena through a single mechanism: the correlation of responses at two points a and b, in series for Malus on a single photon, in parallel for Bell on two identical photons. No other situation is analyzed. The proposed resolution is strictly local, and reassigns cos²(a−b), observed in both cases, as the universal angular ratio of photons. The two experiments thus bring this correlation to light not because paired or polarized photons carry it, but because they make an otherwise invisible correlation testable. Bell’s theorem does not apply to this proposal, because cos²(a−b) is no longer read as the statistics of the responses at a and at b taken separately, but as the statistics of the responses at a and b taken jointly, independently of every other point. In other words, the cos² distribution of responses around an angle a holds only in association with the considered response at a, and does not constrain what the individual statistics of the response at b must be when the response at a is unknown. The article concludes that a strictly local explanation of Bell is possible again, and offers a falsifiable prediction: if identity sharing exists, understanding what it consists of will make it possible to produce identical photons without a common source.