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arXiv:1608.06070 · Europhysics Letters (EPL)

The Leggett-Garg inequality and Page-Wootters mechanism

Debashis Gangopadhyay, Animesh Sinha Roy

Published Nov 1, 2016• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) implies quantum phenomena. In this light we establish that Moreva et al. 's ( Phys. Rev. A , 89 (2014) 052122) experiment demonstrating Page-Wootters' mechanism (P age D. N. and W ootters W. K., Phys. Rev. D , 27 (1983) 2885; W ootters W. K., Int. J. Theor. Phys. , 23 (1984) 701). falls in the quantum domain. An observer outside a 2-photons world does not detect any change in the 2-photons state, i.e. , there is no time parameter for the outside observer. But an observer attached to one of the photons sees the other photon evolving and this means that there is an “internal” time. The LGI is violated for the clock photon whose state evolves with the internal time as measured by the system photon. Conditional probabilities in this 2-photons system are computed for both sharp and unsharp measurements. The conditional probability increases for entangled states as obtained by Page and Wootters for both ideal and also unsharp measurements.

DOI
10.1209/0295-5075/116/40007

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Violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) implies quantum phenomena. In this light we establish that Moreva et al. 's ( Phys. Rev. A , 89 (2014) 052122) experiment demonstrating Page-Wootters' mechanism (P age D. N. and W ootters W. K., Phys. Rev. D , 27 (1983) 2885; W ootters W. K., Int. J. Theor. Phys. , 23 (1984) 701). falls in the quantum domain. An observer outside a 2-photons world does not detect any change in the 2-photons state, i.e. , there is no time parameter for the outside observer. But an observer attached to one of the photons sees the other photon evolving and this means that there is an “internal” time. The LGI is violated for the clock photon whose state evolves with the internal time as measured by the system photon. Conditional probabilities in this 2-photons system are computed for both sharp and unsharp measurements. The conditional probability increases for entangled states as obtained by Page and Wootters for both ideal and also unsharp measurements.
In this paper we provide an experimental illustration of Page and Wootters' quantum time mechanism that is able to describe two-time quantum correlation functions. This allows us to test a Leggett-Garg inequality, showing a violation from the ``internal'' observer point of view. The ``external'' observer sees a time-independent global state. Indeed, the scheme is implemented using a narrow-band single photon where the clock degree of freedom is encoded in the photon's position. Hence, the internal observer that measures the position can track the flow of time, while the external observer sees a delocalized photon that has no time evolution in the experiment time-scale.
Wigner's form of the local realist inequality is used to derive its temporal version for an oscillating two-level system involving two-time joint probabilities. Such an inequality may be regarded as a form of the Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) constituting a necessary condition for macrorealism. The robustness of its quantum mechanical (QM) violation against unsharpness of measurement is investigated by using a suitable model of unsharp measurements. It is found that there exists a range of values of the sharpness parameter (characterizing precision of the relevant measurements) for which the usual LGI is satisfied by QM, but Wigner's form of the LGI (WLGI) is violated. This implies that for such unsharp measurements, the QM violation of macrorealism cannot be tested using the usual LGI, but can be tested using WLGI. In showing this, we take into account the general form of the usual LGI involving an arbitrary number of pairs of two-time correlation functions. Another recently proposed necessary condition for macrorealism, called ``no-signaling in time,'' is also probed, showing that its QM violation persists for arbitrarily unsharp measurements.
Abstract Leggett Garg inequalities (LGIs) provides an elegant way for probing the incompatibility between the notion of macrorealism and quantum mechanics. For unitary dynamics the optimal quantum violation of a LGI is constrained by the L u ¨ ders bound. In this paper, we have studied two formulations of LGIs in three-time LG scenario, viz, the standard LGIs and third-order LGIs both for unbiased and biased measurement settings. We show that if system evolves under non-unitary quantum channel between two measurements, the quantum violations of both forms of LGIs exceed their respective L u ¨ ders bounds and can even reach their algebraic maximum in sharp measurement settings. We found that when the measurement is unsharp the quantum violations of both standard and third-order LGIs for non-unitary quantum channel can be obtained for lower value of the unsharpness parameter compared to the unitary dynamics. We critically examined the violation of L u ¨ ders bound of LGIs and its relation to the violation of various no-signaling in time conditions, another formalism for testing macrorealism. It is shown that mere violations of no-signaling conditions are not enough to warrant the violation of standard LGIs, an interplay between the violations of various NSIT condition along with a threshold value play an important role. On the other hand violation of third-order LGI is obtained when the degree of violation of a specific no-signaling in time condition reaches a different threshold value.
The Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) is a temporal analogue of Bell's inequality and provides a quantitative test of the nonclassicality of a system through its violation. We analytically investigate the violation of the LGI in the context of photon-graviton conversion in a magnetic field background, motivated by its potential applications to testing the nonclassicality of gravity. When gravitational perturbations are quantized as gravitons, the conversion of an initial single photon state gives rise to a superposition of photon and graviton states. We show that the temporal correlations obtained from successive projective measurements on the photon-graviton system violate the LGI. Observation of such a violation would provide a novel avenue for probing the quantum nature of gravity.
We report an experimental study of recently formulated entropic Leggett-Garg inequality (ELGI) by Usha Devi et al. [Phys. Rev. A 87, 052103 (2013)]. This inequality places a bound on the statistical measurement outcomes of dynamical observables describing a macrorealistic system. Such a bound is not necessarily obeyed by quantum systems, and therefore provides an important way to distinguish quantumness from classical behavior. Here we study ELGI using a two-qubit nuclear magnetic resonance system. To perform the noninvasive measurements required for the ELGI study, we prepare the system qubit in a maximally mixed state as well as use the ``ideal negative result measurement'' procedure with the help of an ancilla qubit. The experimental results show a clear violation of ELGI by over four standard deviations. These results agree with the predictions of quantum theory. The violation of ELGI is attributed to the fact that certain joint probabilities are not legitimate in the quantum scenario, in the sense they do not reproduce all the marginal probabilities. Using a three-qubit system, we also demonstrate that three-time joint probabilities do not reproduce certain two-time marginal probabilities.
Temporal Bell inequalities, or Leggett-Garg inequalities (LGIs), are studied for continuous-variable systems placed in a squeezed state. The importance of those systems lies in their broad applicability, which allows the description of many different physical settings in various branches of physics, ranging from cosmology to condensed matter physics and from optics to quantum information theory. Leggett-Garg inequality violations are explored and systematically mapped in squeezing parameter space. Configurations for which LGI violation occurs are found, but it is shown that no violation can be obtained if all squeezing angles vanish, contrary to what happens for the spatial Bell inequalities. We also assess the effect of decoherence on the detectability of such violations. Our study opens up the possibility of new experimental designs for the observation of LGI violation.