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arXiv:1301.3496 · Scientific Reports

An experimental proposal for revealing contextuality in almost all qutrit states

Jayne E. Thompson, Robert Pisarczyk, Paweł Kurzyński, Dagomir Kaszlikowski

Published Sep 19, 2013• 7 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Contextuality is a foundational phenomenon underlying key differences between quantum theory and classical realistic descriptions of the world. Here we propose an experimental test which is capable of revealing contextuality in all qutrit systems, except the completely mixed state, provided we choose the measurement basis appropriately. The 3-level system is furnished by the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of a single photon, which encompass three orthogonal modes. Projective measurements along rays in the 3-dimensional Hilbert space are made by linear optical elements and detectors which are sensitive to single mode. We also discuss the impact of detector inefficiency and losses and review the theoretical foundations of this test.

DOI
10.1038/srep02706

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Contextuality is a foundational phenomenon underlying key differences between quantum theory and classical realistic descriptions of the world. Here we propose an experimental test which is capable of revealing contextuality in all qutrit systems, except the completely mixed state, provided we choose the measurement basis appropriately. The 3-level system is furnished by the polarization and spatial degrees of freedom of a single photon, which encompass three orthogonal modes. Projective measurements along rays in the 3-dimensional Hilbert space are made by linear optical elements and detectors which are sensitive to single mode. We also discuss the impact of detector inefficiency and losses and review the theoretical foundations of this test.
We propose a test of quantum contextuality for a single three-level system that uses nine projective measurements. It has the form of an inequality that has to be satisfied by any noncontextual theory. We show that for any qutrit state, except for the maximally mixed state, one can always find a set of nine observables for which the corresponding inequality is violated. This inequality is a test of contextuality that may offer insight into the relation between state-dependent and state-independent contextuality tests present in the literature.
The violation of contextuality inequalities shows a strong conflict between the noncontextual hidden variable theory and quantum mechanics. A single qutrit is the simplest indivisible quantum system that can allow a state-dependent contextuality test with five observables and a state-independent contextuality test with 13 observables. For any qutrit states, except for the maximally mixed state, one can always find a set of nine observables for which the corresponding inequality is violated [P. Kurzynski and D. Kaszlikowski, Phys. Rev. A 86, 042125 (2012)]. In this paper, we demonstrate the violation of this inequality using single-photon experiments. Our experiments not only enrich the tests of quantum contextuality, but also deepen the understanding of the physical nature of quantum mechanics.
Abstract Contextuality is a phenomenon at the heart of quantum mechanics different from classical behavior and has been recently identified as a resource in quantum information processing. Experimental demonstration of contextuality is thus an important goal. We experimentally demonstrate a test of state-independent contextuality in a four-dimensional Hilbert space with single photons and violate the inequality by at least 387 standard deviations. Despite imperfections and possible measurement disturbance, our results cannot be explained in non-contextual models. We also provide a theoretical analysis of a test of contextuality with a coherent light field and show how the definitions affect the emergence of non-classical correlations. Our result sheds new light on the conflict between quantum and classical physics.
State-independent contextuality is a fundamental phenomenon in quantum mechanics, which has been demonstrated experimentally in different systems in recent years. Here we show that such contextuality can also be simulated in classical optical systems. Using path and polarization degrees of freedom of classical optics fields, we have constructed the classical trit (cetrit), here the term 'cetrit' is the classical counterpart of a qutrit in quantum systems. Furthermore, in classical optical systems we have simulated the violations of several Yu-Oh-like noncontextual inequalities in a state-independent manner by implementing the projection measurements. Our results not only provide new physical insights into the contextuality and also show the application prospects of the concepts developed recently in quantum information science to classical optical systems and optical information processes.
Contextuality is a phenomenon at the heart of the quantum mechanical departure from classical behaviour, 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 doesn't 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.