Experimental violations of Bell's inequalities with time-bin and polarization entanglement Violazione delle disuguaglianze di Bell con entanglement in polarizzazione e time-bin
In this thesis activity the candidate has explored the main aspects of Bell Inequalities
theory and eventually executed an experimental Violation test.
This work contains a brief overview of the theoretical aspects around Bell Inequalities:
the doubts arisen by Einstein, Podolski and Rosen about Quantum Theory completeness;
the hidden variable theories and the bounds on classical correlations; quantum
correlations and violation of Bell inequalities; the response given by Bell to the EPR
paradox by introducing its famous theorem. In addition, the entanglement phenomenon
has been studied, in particular in those dof that are given an important role in the violation
of Bell Inequalities. Some documentation work was also done on non linear optics
in order to understand fundamental effects that is common practice to exploit in the
photon entanglement generation: SHG for the pump photons, SPDC in non-linear crystals.
Moreover, the candidate also explored in this thesis some issues more closely related
to the experimental aspect:loopholes that could affect the integrity of Bell inequalities
proofs; efficiency threshold estimates regarding detection loophole; loophole-free configurations.
Eventually, here in this report are also showed, along with the experimental
setup brief description and some comments on the apparatus and its setting, the results
of an experimental test of the CHSH inequality violation using photons entangled at first
in polarization and then in a time-bin entanglement configuration.
In this thesis activity the candidate has explored the main aspects of Bell Inequalities
theory and eventually executed an experimental Violation test.
This work contains a brief overview of the theoretical aspects around Bell Inequalities:
the doubts arisen by Einstein, Podolski and Rosen about Quantum Theory completeness;
the hidden variable theories and the bounds on classical correlations; quantum
correlations and violation of Bell inequalities; the response given by Bell to the EPR
paradox by introducing its famous theorem. In addition, the entanglement phenomenon
has been studied, in particular in those dof that are given an important role in the violation
of Bell Inequalities. Some documentation work was also done on non linear optics
in order to understand fundamental effects that is common practice to exploit in the
photon entanglement generation: SHG for the pump photons, SPDC in non-linear crystals.
Moreover, the candidate also explored in this thesis some issues more closely related
to the experimental aspect:loopholes that could affect the integrity of Bell inequalities
proofs; efficiency threshold estimates regarding detection loophole; loophole-free configurations.
Eventually, here in this report are also showed, along with the experimental
setup brief description and some comments on the apparatus and its setting, the results
of an experimental test of the CHSH inequality violation using photons entangled at first
in polarization and then in a time-bin entanglement configuration.
Optimization of a Pulsed Source of Entangled Photons for the Violation of the CHSH Inequality
This thesis focuses on my work carried out in the Quantum Communications laboratory with the Quantum Future research group of the Department of Information Engeneering, in which I worked on the creation and optimization of a pulsed source of polarization entangled photons. The main focus in the laboratory was to optimize the experimental setup to prove the entangled nature of the photons produced. This was done by violating the Bell inequality in the form presented by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (CHSH) in 1969. The present work's objective is to provide an overview of all the crucial physical phenomena exploited in the experiment to obtain the wanted results.
In section 1 a presentation of the phenomenon of entanglement and of Bell's argument proving the incapability to describe its properties with a both real and local theory is given, along with the derivation of the ``CHSH inequality and the possibility to violate it with polarization entangled photons. Sections 2 and 3 focus on the properties of the Gaussian beam used in the experiment and its source: the mode-locked Mira laser. A brief discussion about mode-locked lasers and their properties is provided. In section 4 the nonlinear optical phenomena of second harmonic generation and spontaneous parametric down conversion are discussed, the former from a classical standpoint and the latter with a few quantum mechanical considerations. Section 5 focuses on polarization optics and the both classical and quantum mechanical formalism of the Jones vectors. A discussion of the effects of the birefringent devices used in the experiment on the photons' state is provided. Finally, sections 6 and 7 display a complete overview of the experimental setup and the results obtained for the violation of the inequality. A systematic explanation of the experimental optimization procedure is provided in section 6 as it may be useful for the future experimenters, since it proved to be tricky.
Throughout all the work, various characteristics of the devices used in the experimental setup are given, hopefully making the most important and peculiar aspects of the experiment clear.
This thesis is the synthesis of theoretical and experimental works performed in the area of quantum foundations, particularly on quantum correlations and experimental tests of multiplicative Bell inequalities. First we begin with a comprehensive theoretical work performed on the foundations of quantum mechanics, focusing on the puzzling concepts of quantum entanglement, and hidden variable theories. Specifically, we present a broad overview of different classes of hidden variable theories such as local, crypto-nonlocal, contextual and non-local theories, along with several Bell like inequalities for these theories, providing theoretical proofs based on quantum mechanics for the falsification of some of these theories. Second we present a body of experimental, and theoretical works performed on a new class of Bell inequalities, i.e., the multiplicative Bell inequalities. We experimentally report the observation of the Bell parameters close to the Tsirelson (quantum) limit, upto a large number of measurement devices (n), and compare the results with a particular deterministic strategy. We also obtain classical bounds for some n, and report the experimental violation of these classical limits. We theoretically derive new richer bounds on the CHSH inequality (named after John Clauser, Michael Horne, Abnor Shimony and Richard Holt) and the multiplicative Bell parameter for n=2, based on the principle of ``relativistic independence'', and experimentally observe the distribution of Bell parameters as predicted by these bounds.
Entanglement, describing the inseparability of a quantum multiparty system, is one of the most intriguing features of quantum mechanics. Violation of Bell inequality, for ruling out the possibility of local hidden variable theories, is commonly used as a strong witness for quantum entanglement. In previous Bell test experiments with photonic entanglement based on two-photon coincidence measurement, the photon temporal wave packets are absorbed completely by the detectors. That is, the photon coherence time is much shorter than the detection time window. Here we demonstrate generation of frequency-bin entangled narrowband biphotons, and for the first time, test the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) Bell inequality |S|<= 2 for their nonlocal temporal correlations with time-resolved detection. We obtain a maximum |S| value of 2.52+/-0.48 that violates the CHSH inequality. Our result will have applications in quantum information processing involving time-frequency entanglement.
Nowadays, it is commonly admitted that the experimental violation of Bell’s inequalities that was successfully demonstrated in the last decades by many experimenters, are indeed the ultimate proof of quantum physics and of its ability to describe the whole microscopic world and beyond. But the historical and scientific story may not be envisioned so clearly: it starts with the original paper of Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) aiming at demonstrating that the formalism of quantum theory is incomplete. It then goes through the works of D. Bohm, to finally proceed to the famous John Bell’s relationships providing an experimental setup to solve the EPR paradox. In this communication is proposed an alternative reading of this history, showing that modern experiments based on correlations between light polarizations significantly deviate from the original spirit of the EPR paper. It is concluded that current experimental violations of Bell’s inequalities cannot be considered as an ultimate proof of the completeness of quantum physics models.
The aim of this paper is to attract the attention of experimenters to the original Bell (OB) inequality that was shadowed by the common consideration of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. There are two reasons to test the OB inequality and not the CHSH inequality. First of all, the OB inequality is a straightforward consequence to the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) argumentation. In addition, only this inequality is directly related to the EPR-Bohr debate. The second distinguishing feature of the OB inequality was emphasized by Itamar Pitowsky. He pointed out that the OB inequality provides a higher degree of violations of classicality than the CHSH inequality. For the CHSH inequality, the fraction of the quantum (Tsirelson) bound Q CHSH = 2 2 to the classical bound C CHSH = 2 , i.e., F CHSH = Q CHSH C CHSH = 2 is less than the fraction of the quantum bound for the OB inequality Q OB = 3 2 to the classical bound C OB = 1 , i.e., F OB = Q OB C OB = 3 2 . Thus, by violating the OB inequality, it is possible to approach a higher degree of deviation from classicality. The main problem is that the OB inequality is derived under the assumption of perfect (anti-) correlations. However, the last few years have been characterized by the amazing development of quantum technologies. Nowadays, there exist sources producing, with very high probability, the pairs of photons in the singlet state. Moreover, the efficiency of photon detectors was improved tremendously. In any event, one can start by proceeding with the fair sampling assumption. Another possibility is to use the scheme of the Hensen et al. experiment for entangled electrons. Here, the detection efficiency is very high.
Abstract This chapter presents a detailed discussion of Bell inequalities and their experimental tests. Starting from the Aharonov-Bohm version of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox, we review EPR’s criteria for realism and completeness and Bell’s locality condition, before deriving the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality. This is followed by an exposition on Bell’s original inequality and other Bell inequalities by Wigner, as well as Clauser and Horne. We then discuss the milestones in the experimental violation of Bell inequalities, from the experiment of Freedman and Clauser in the 1970s, to the efforts of Aspect et al. in the 1980s, the experiments by the teams of Zeilinger and Gisin in the 1990s, and culminating the loophole-free tests in 2015. Finally we turn to a brief discussion of the interpretations of quantum mechanics, focusing on contrasting the realist views held by, e.g., Einstein and Bell, and the informational views with proponents such as Brukner and Zeilinger