Experimental generalized contextuality with single-photon qubits
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Author(s)
Zhan, Xiang
Cavalcanti, Eric G
Li, Jian
Bian, Zhihao
Zhang, Yongsheng
Wiseman, Howard M
Xue, Peng
Year published
2017
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Contextuality is a phenomenon at the heart of the quantum mechanical departure from classical behavior, and has been recently identified as a resource in quantum computation. Experimental demonstration of contextuality is thus an important goal. The traditional form of contextuality—as violation of a Kochen–Specker inequality—requires a quantum system with at least three levels, and the status of the assumption of determinism used in deriving those inequalities has been controversial. By considering “unsharp” observables, Liang, Spekkens, and Wiseman (LSW) derived an inequality for generalized noncontextual models that does ...
View more >Contextuality is a phenomenon at the heart of the quantum mechanical departure from classical behavior, and has been recently identified as a resource in quantum computation. Experimental demonstration of contextuality is thus an important goal. The traditional form of contextuality—as violation of a Kochen–Specker inequality—requires a quantum system with at least three levels, and the status of the assumption of determinism used in deriving those inequalities has been controversial. By considering “unsharp” observables, Liang, Spekkens, and Wiseman (LSW) derived an inequality for generalized noncontextual models that does not assume determinism, and applies already to a qubit. We experimentally implement the LSW test using the polarization states of a heralded single photon and three unsharp binary measurements. We violate the LSW inequality by more than 16 standard deviations, thus showing that our results cannot be reproduced by a noncontextual subset of quantum theory.
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View more >Contextuality is a phenomenon at the heart of the quantum mechanical departure from classical behavior, and has been recently identified as a resource in quantum computation. Experimental demonstration of contextuality is thus an important goal. The traditional form of contextuality—as violation of a Kochen–Specker inequality—requires a quantum system with at least three levels, and the status of the assumption of determinism used in deriving those inequalities has been controversial. By considering “unsharp” observables, Liang, Spekkens, and Wiseman (LSW) derived an inequality for generalized noncontextual models that does not assume determinism, and applies already to a qubit. We experimentally implement the LSW test using the polarization states of a heralded single photon and three unsharp binary measurements. We violate the LSW inequality by more than 16 standard deviations, thus showing that our results cannot be reproduced by a noncontextual subset of quantum theory.
View less >
Journal Title
Optica
Volume
4
Issue
8
Copyright Statement
© 2017 Optical Society of America. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited.
Subject
Foundations of quantum mechanics
Quantum optics and quantum optomechanics
Quantum information, computation and communication
Atomic, molecular and optical physics