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arXiv:2603.22020

Identical, independent quantum weak measurements violate objective realism

Tomasz Rybotycki, Tomasz Białecki, Josep Batle, Bartłomiej Zglinicki, Adam Szereszewski, Wolfgang Belzig, Adam Bednorz

quant-phSubmitted Mar 23, 2026• Announced Mar 24, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

We demonstrate violation of objective realism in quantum world using unconstrained weak measurements. Instead of limited Leggett-Garg approach with artificial bounds on the observed values, we assume two identical and indepenent weak detectors and final conditioning. The experimental verification has been performed on public quantum computers, IBM and IonQ. Thanks to sufficiently large statistics, the violation is observed at the level of 10 standard deviations. The tests confirmed also high quality of parametric two-qubit gates offered by main quantum hardware providers.

Comments
17 pages, 12 figures

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We demonstrate violation of objective realism in quantum world using unconstrained weak measurements. Instead of limited Leggett-Garg approach with artificial bounds on the observed values, we assume two identical and indepenent weak detectors and final conditioning. The experimental verification has been performed on public quantum computers, IBM and IonQ. Thanks to sufficiently large statistics, the violation is observed at the level of 10 standard deviations. The tests confirmed also high quality of parametric two-qubit gates offered by main quantum hardware providers.
By weakly measuring the polarization of a photon between two strong polarization measurements, we experimentally investigate the correlation between the appearance of anomalous values in quantum weak measurements and the violation of realism and nonintrusiveness of measurements. A quantitative formulation of the latter concept is expressed in terms of a Leggett-Garg inequality for the outcomes of subsequent measurements of an individual quantum system. We experimentally violate the Leggett-Garg inequality for several measurement strengths. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate that there is a one-to-one correlation between achieving strange weak values and violating the Leggett-Garg inequality.
Abstract We demonstrate the first violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality and time-order noninvariance on public quantum computers using genuine noninvasive measurements. By gathering sufficiently large statistics, we have been able to violate Leggett-Garg inequality and time-order invariance. The detailed analysis of the data on 10 qubit sets from 5 devices available on IBM Quantum and one on IonQ reveals violations beyond 5 standard deviations in almost all cases. We implemented our protocols using fractional gates, newly available on the IBM Heron devices, allowing us to benchmark them in application to weak measurements. The noninvasiveness is supported by a qualitative and quantitative agreement with the model of weak disturbance. Moreover, our data expose statistically significant deviations from theoretical predictions that exceed declared device error rates, establishing weak measurement protocols as a sensitive benchmark for quantum hardware. These advances transform public quantum computers into practical testbeds for probing foundational questions of realism and temporal order with unprecedented accessibility and precision.
The Leggett-Garg inequalities probe the classical-quantum boundary by putting limits on the sum of pairwise correlation functions between classical measurement devices that consecutively measured the same quantum system. The apparent violation of these inequalities by standard quantum measurements has cast doubt on quantum mechanics' ability to consistently describe classical objects. Recent work has concluded that these inequalities cannot be violated by either strong or weak projective measurements [1]. Here I consider an entropic version of the Leggett-Garg inequalities that are different from the standard inequalities yet similar in form, and can be defined without reference to any particular observable. I find that the entropic inequalities also cannot be be violated by strong quantum measurements. The entropic inequalities can be extended to describe weak quantum measurements, and I show that these weak entropic Leggett-Garg inequalities cannot be violated either even though the quantum system remains unprojected, because the inequalities describe the classical measurement devices, not the quantum system. I conclude that quantum mechanics adequately describes classical devices, and that we should be careful not to assume that the classical devices accurately describe the quantum system.
Quantum mechanics presents peculiar properties that, on the one hand, have been the subject of several theoretical and experimental studies about its very foundations and, on the other hand, provide tools for developing new technologies, the so-called quantum technologies. The nonclassicality pointed out by Leggett-Garg inequalities has represented, with Bell inequalities, one of the most investigated subjects. In this article we study the connection of Leggett-Garg inequalities with a new emerging field of quantum measurement, the weak values in the case of a series of sequential measurements on a single object. In detail, we perform an experimental study of the four-time-correlator Leggett-Garg test, by exploiting single and sequential weak measurements performed on heralded single photons.
Leggett-Garg's inequalities predict sharp bounds for some classical correlation functions that address the quantum or classical nature of real-time evolutions. We experimentally observe the violations of these bounds on single- and multiqubit systems, in different settings, exploiting the IBM Quantum platform. In the multiqubit case, we introduce the Leggett-Garg-Bell's inequalities as an alternative to the previous ones. Measuring these correlation functions, we find quantum error mitigation to be essential to spot inequalities violations. Accessing only two qubit readouts, we assess Leggett-Garg-Bell's inequalities to emerge as the most efficient quantum coherence witnesses to be used for investigating quantum hardware, among those introduced. Our analysis highlights the limits of current quantum platforms, showing that the above-mentioned correlation functions deviate from theoretical prediction as the number of qubits and the depth of the circuit grow.
Leggett and Garg derived inequalities that probe the boundaries of classical and quantum physics by putting limits on the properties that classical objects can have. Historically, it has been suggested that Leggett-Garg inequalities are easily violated by quantum systems undergoing sequences of strong measurements, casting doubt on whether quantum mechanics correctly describes macroscopic objects. Here I show that Leggett-Garg inequalities cannot be violated by any projective measurement. The perceived violation of the inequalities found previously can be traced back to an inappropriate assumption of non-invasive measurability. Surprisingly, weak projective measurements cannot violate the Leggett-Garg inequalities either because even though the quantum system itself is not fully projected via weak measurements, the measurement devices are.