Physical Review Letters
Spin Correlations of Strongly Interacting Massive Fermion Pairs as a Test of Bell’s Inequality
Hideyuki SAKAI, T. Saito, T. Ikeda, K. Itoh, T. Kawabata, H. Kuboki, Yukie Maeda, Naoki Matsui, C. Rangacharyulu, M. Sasano, Y. Satou, K. Sekiguchi, Kenji Suda, A. Tamii, Tomohiro Uesaka, K. Yako
Abstract
We report the results of the first-time test of the local hidden variable theories (Bell-Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt) involving strongly interacting pairs of massive spin $1/2$ hadrons from the decay of short-lived ($\ensuremath{\tau}<{10}^{\ensuremath{-}21}\mathrm{sec}$) $^{2}\mathrm{He}$ spin-singlet state, populated in the nuclear reaction $^{2}\mathrm{H}+^{1}\mathrm{H}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}^{2}\mathrm{He}+n$. The novel features of this experiment are (a) the use of an ``event-ready'' detector of nearly 100% efficiency to prepare an unbiased sample and (b) a focal-plane polarimeter of full $2\ensuremath{\pi}\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{sr}$ acceptance with a random ``post selection'' of the reference axes. The spin-correlation function is deduced to be ${S}_{\mathrm{exp}}(\ensuremath{\pi}/4)=2.83\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}{0.24}_{\mathrm{stat}}\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}{0.07}_{\mathrm{sys}}$. This result is in agreement with nonlocal quantum mechanical prediction and it violates the Bell-CHSH inequality of $|S|\ensuremath{\le}2$ at a confidence level of 99.3%.