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Physical Review A

Violation of Bell’s inequality by macroscopic states generated via parametric down-conversion

William J. Munro, M. D. Reid

Published May 1, 1993• 21 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We show that correlated photon-number states predicted to violate a Bell's inequality of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt type might be generated from parametric amplification. The test is potentially one of macroscopic quantum mechanics in that violations are predicted for situations where a large number of photons are detected in a single detector at one time. The traditional amplifier and detectors allow violation only for regimes where the probability of generation of a macroscopic state is very small. We suggest that this probability may be dramatically improved with the use of squeezing and photon-number-state-preparation techniques.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.47.4412

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We show that correlated photon-number states predicted to violate a Bell's inequality of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt type might be generated from parametric amplification. The test is potentially one of macroscopic quantum mechanics in that violations are predicted for situations where a large number of photons are detected in a single detector at one time. The traditional amplifier and detectors allow violation only for regimes where the probability of generation of a macroscopic state is very small. We suggest that this probability may be dramatically improved with the use of squeezing and photon-number-state-preparation techniques.
We show that various experimental configurations using correlated photon-number states are predicted to violate many forms of Bell's inequality. This test is potentially one of macroscopic quantum mechanics in that violations are predicted for situations where large numbers of photons are detected at a single detector at a time. The configurations also allow higher-spin tests of quantum mechanics. We indicate how the violations of Bell inequalities might be achieved with both parametric amplification and parametric oscillation. The effect of photodetection inefficiencies is analyzed. In order to investigate the potential for Bell-inequality tests in the high-intensity regime of recent experiments where detection efficiencies may be very high, we introduce a simple model for the effect of electronic noise that introduces a poor resolution of the photon number detected.
Inspired by previous studies and pioneers of the field, we present new results on an extensive Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (EPR)–Bell experiment using photons generated by parametric down-conversion, where one of the photons is deliberately phase-shifted. Our experiments show some surprising results for particular angles of this phase shift, where, for some states, the Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt inequality shows no violations, requiring us to review our understanding of “entangled” states vis-à-vis the correlations obtained via experimental coincidence counts in agreement with quantum mechanics theoretical predictions. We give some possible explanations about the correlated states that show no violations of these inequalities.
We demonstrate the experimental violation of a spin-1 Bell inequality. The spin-1 inequality is based on the Clauser, Horne, Shimony, and Holt formalism. For entangled spin-1 particles, the maximum quantum-mechanical prediction is 2.55 as opposed to a maximum of 2, predicted using local hidden variables. We obtained an experimental value of 2.27+/-0.02 using the four-photon state generated by pulsed, type-II, stimulated parametric down-conversion. This is a violation of the spin-1 Bell inequality by more than 13 standard deviations.
We show how polarization measurements on the output fields generated by parametric down conversion will reveal a violation of multiparticle Bell inequalities, in the regime of both low- and high-output intensity. In this case, each spatially separated system, upon which a measurement is performed, is comprised of more than one particle. In view of the formal analogy with spin systems, the proposal provides an opportunity to test the predictions of quantum mechanics for spatially separated higher spin states. Here the quantum behavior possible even where measurements are performed on systems of large quantum (particle) number may be demonstrated. Our proposal applies to both vacuum-state signal and idler inputs, and also to the quantum-injected parametric amplifier as studied by De Martini et al. The effect of detector inefficiencies is included, and weaker Bell-Clauser-Horne inequalities are derived to enable realistic tests of local hidden variables with auxiliary assumptions for the multiparticle situation.
We theoretically and experimentally investigate the optimal conditions for the Bell experiment using spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) sources. In theory, we show that a relatively large average photon number (typically $\ensuremath{\sim}0.5$) is desirable to observe the maximum violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. Moreover, we show that the violation converges to 0.27 in the limit of large average photon number. In experiment, we perform the Bell experiment without postselection using polarization-entangled photon pairs at 1550-nm telecommunication wavelength generated from SPDC sources. While the violation of the CHSH inequality is not directly observed due to the overall detection efficiencies of our system, the experimental values agree well with those obtained by the theory with experimental imperfections. Furthermore, in the range of small average photon numbers ($\ensuremath{\le}0.1$), we propose and demonstrate a method to estimate the ideal CHSH value intrinsically contained in the tested state from the lossy experimental data without assuming the input quantum state.
Motivated by very recent experiments, we consider a scenario ``\`a la Bell'' in which two protagonists test the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality using a photon-pair source based on spontaneous parametric down conversion and imperfect photon detectors. The conventional wisdom says that (i) if the detectors have unit efficiency, the CHSH violation can reach its maximum quantum value of 222\sqrt{2}22​. To obtain the maximal possible violation, it suffices that the source emits (ii) maximally entangled photon pairs (iii) in two well-defined single modes. Through a nonperturabive calculation of nonlocal correlations, we show that none of these statements are true. By providing the optimal pump parameters, measurement settings and state structure for any detection efficiency and dark count probability, our results give the recipe to close all the loopholes in a Bell test using photon pairs.