A Tsirelson bound is an upper limit to quantum mechanical correlations between distant events. Given that quantum mechanics is non-local, i.e., that quantum mechanical correlations violate Bell inequalities, a natural question to ask is "how non-local can quantum mechanics be?", or, more precisely, by how much can the Bell inequality be violated. The answer is precisely the Tsirelson bound for the particular Bell inequality in question. In general this bound is lower than what would be algebraically possible, and much research has been dedicated to the question of why this is the case.
The Tsirelson bounds are named after Boris S. Tsirelson (or Cirel'son, in a different transliteration), the author of the paper in which the first one was derived.
The first Tsirelson bound was derived as an upper bound on the correlations measured in the CHSH inequality. It states that if we have four (Hermitian) dichotomic observables , , , (i.e., two observables for Alice and two for Bob) with outcomes such that for all , then