Quantum correlations may violate the Bell inequalities. Most experimental schemes confirming this prediction have been realized in all-optical Bell tests suffering from the detection loophole. Experiments which simultaneously close this loophole and the locality loophole are highly desirable and remain challenging. An approach to loophole-free Bell tests is based on amplification of the entangled photons (i.e., on macroscopic entanglement), for which an optical signal should be easy to detect. However, the macroscopic states are partially indistinguishable by classical detectors. An interesting idea to overcome these limitations is to replace the postselection by an appropriate preselection immediately after the amplification. This is in the spirit of state preprocessing revealing hidden nonlocality. Here, we examine one of the possible preselections, but the presented tools can be used for analysis of other schemes. Filtering methods making the macroscopic entanglement useful for Bell tests and quantum protocols are the subject of an intensive study in the field nowadays.
Entanglement gives rise to correlations between distant quantum systems that cannot be explained by local realistic theories. Bell inequality violations provide a direct way to reveal these correlations and certify nonlocality, especially when the relevant experimental loopholes are closed. Time-bin encoding, in which quantum information is encoded into well-defined temporal modes, is a commonly used platform for distributing photonic entanglement in optical fibers. Yet loophole-free Bell tests with time-bin entanglement have received comparatively little attention, owing in part to the postselection loophole introduced by conventional interferometric measurements. Here, we demonstrate a fiber-based platform for Bell tests with time-bin entanglement that simultaneously closes the locality, freedom-of-choice, and postselection loopholes. We observe a CHSH violation of
S=2.583±0.002, exceeding the local-realistic bound by over 265 standard deviations. Notably, this rigorous certification of nonlocality is achieved at a separation distance of
49.0±0.7 m, substantially shorter than previous photonic Bell tests addressing comparable space-time constraints. Beyond its foundational significance, our results demonstrate time-bin entanglement as a viable route towards practical device-independent quantum communication and a future quantum internet.