Adopting the frame of mesoscopic physics, we describe a Bell-type experiment involving time-delayed two-particle correlation measurements. The indistinguishability of quantum particles results in a specific interference between different trajectories; the nonlocality in the time-delayed correlations manifests itself in the violation of a Bell inequality, with the degree of violation related to the accuracy of the measurement. In addition, we demonstrate how the interrelation between the orbital- and the spin-exchange symmetry can by exploited to infer knowledge on spin entanglement from a measurement of orbital entanglement.
Adopting the frame of mesoscopic physics, we describe a Bell-type experiment involving time-delayed two-particle correlation measurements. The indistinguishability of quantum particles results in a specific interference between different trajectories; the nonlocality in the time-delayed correlations manifests itself in the violation of a Bell inequality, with the degree of violation related to the accuracy of the measurement. In addition, we demonstrate how the interrelation between the orbital- and the spin-exchange symmetry can by exploited to infer knowledge on spin entanglement from a measurement of orbital entanglement.
Adopting the frame of mesoscopic physics, we describe a Bell type experiment involving time-delayed two-particle correlation measurements. The indistinguishability of quantum particles results in a specific interference between different trajectories. We show how the non-locality in the time-delayed correlations due to the indistinguishability of the quantum particles manifests itself in the violation of a Bell inequality, where the degree of violation is related to the accuracy of the measurement. We demonstrate how the interrelation between the orbital- and the spin exchange symmetry can by exploited to infer knowledge on spin-entanglement from a measurement of orbital entanglement.
We study the time-dependent electron-electron and electron-hole correlations in a mesoscopic device which is splitting an incident current of free fermions into two spatially separated particle streams. We analyze the appearance of entanglement as manifested in a Bell inequality test and discuss its origin in terms of local spin-singlet correlations already present in the initial channel and the action of post-selection during the Bell-type measurement. The time window over which the Bell inequality is violated is determined in the tunneling limit and for the general situation with arbitrary transparencies. We compare our results with alternative Bell inequality tests based on coincidence probabilities.
We propose a spin-independent scheme to generate and detect two-particle entanglement in a mesoscopic normal-superconductor system. A superconductor, weakly coupled to the normal conductor, generates an orbitally entangled state by injecting pairs of electrons into different leads of the normal conductor. The entanglement is detected via violation of a Bell inequality, formulated in terms of zero-frequency current cross correlators. It is shown that the Bell inequality can be violated for arbitrary strong dephasing in the normal conductor.
Bell-type experiments that test correlated observables typically involve measurements of spin or polarization on multi-particle systems in singlet states. These observables are all non-commuting and satisfy an uncertainty relation. Theoretically, the non-commuting nature should be independent of whether the singlet state consists of multiple particles or a single particle. In addition, if Bell-type inequalities can be found for experiments involving spin and polarization, the same should be true for experiments involving other non-commuting observables such as position and momentum. In fact the original EPR paper used position and momentum, though in a different experimental situation. As such, an experiment is proposed to measure (quantum mechanically) position and momentum for a single oscillator as a means for deriving a Bell-type inequality for these correlated observables. The experiment, if realizable, would shed light on the basic nature of matter, perhaps pointing to some form of self-entanglement, and would also help to further elucidate a possible mechanism behind the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Violation of these inequalities would, in fact, offer yet another confirmation of the principle.
Coincidence detections are measured between the output ports of a beam splitter whose input is an orthogonally polarized two-photon state produced in type-II spontaneous parametric down-conversion. When the delays between the two optical paths leading to each detector are varied by two spatially separated Pockel cells, a two-photon interference effect is seen that highlights a simultaneous entanglement in both spin and space-time variables. In contrast to all previous experimental tests of Bell's in- equalities, which have utilized states entangled with respect to only one type of observable, the double entanglement realized here allows the demonstration of two different types of Bell inequality violations in one experimental setup.
It is one of the most remarkable features of quantum physics that measurements on spatially separated systems cannot always be described by a locally causal theory. In such a theory, the outcomes of local measurements are determined in advance solely by some unknown (or hidden) variables and the choice of local measurements. Correlations that are allowed within the framework of a locally causal theory are termed classical. Typically, the fact that quantum mechanics does not always result in classical correlations is revealed by the violation of Bell inequalities, which are constraints that have to be satisfied by any classical correlations. It has been known for a long time that entanglement is necessary to demonstrate nonclassical correlations, and hence a Bell inequality violation. However, since some entangled quantum states are known to admit explicit locally causal models, the exact role of entanglement in Bell inequality violation has remained obscure. This thesis provides both a comprehensive review on these issues as well as a report on new discoveries made to clarify the relationship between entanglement and Bell inequality violation. In particular, within the framework of a standard Bell experiment, i.e., a Bell inequality test that is directly performed on a single copy of a quantum state r, we have derived two algorithms to determine, respectively, a lower bound and an upper bound on the strength of correlations that r can offer for any given Bell inequality. Both of these algorithms make use convex optimization techniques in the form of a semidefinite program. By examples, we show that these algorithms can often be used in tandem, in conjunction with convexity arguments, to determine if a quantum state can offer nonclassical correlations and hence violates a given Bell inequality. On the other hand, since a standard Bell experiment typically involves measurements over many copies of the quantum systems, we have also investigated the possibility of enhancing the strength of nonclassical correlation by, instead, performing collective measurements on multiple copies of the quantum systems. Our findings show that even without postselection, such joint measurements may also lead to stronger nonclassical correlations, and hence a better Bell inequality violation. Meanwhile, previous studies have indicated that entangled state admitting locally causal models may still lead to observable nonclassical correlations if, prior to a standard Bell experiment, the state is subjected to some appropriate local preprocessing. This phenomenon of hidden nonlocality was discovered more than a decade ago, but to date, it is still not known if all entangled states can demonstrate nonclassical correlations through these more sophisticated Bell experiments. A key result in this thesis then consists of showing that for all bipartite entangled states, observable nonclassical correlations, in the form of a Bell-CHSH inequality violation, can indeed be derived if we allow both local preprocessing and the usage of shared ancillary state which by itself does not violate the Bell-CHSH inequality. This establishes a kind of equivalence between bipartite entanglement and states that cannot be simulated by classical correlations. In summary, for a standard Bell experiment where no local preprocessing on a quantum state r is allowed, we have provided two algorithms that can be used in tandem to determine if r can be simulated by a locally causal theory, whereas in the scenario where local preprocessing is allowed, we have demonstrated that bipartite entangled states are precisely those which cannot always be simulated classically.