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General Hardy's Paradox

Shuhan Jiang, Zhen‐Peng Xu, Hong-Yi Su, Arun Kumar Pati, Jing‐Ling Chen

Published Sep 28, 2017• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

Here we present the most general framework for $n$-particle Hardy's paradoxes, which include Hardy's original one and Cereceda's extension as special cases. Remarkably, for any $n\ge 3$ we demonstrate that there always exist generalized paradoxes (with the success probability as high as $1/2^{n-1}$) that are stronger than the previous ones in showing the conflict of quantum mechanics with local realism. An experimental proposal to observe the stronger paradox is also presented for the case of three qubits. Furthermore, from these paradoxes we can construct the most general Hardy's inequalities, which enable us to detect Bell's nonlocality for more quantum states.

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Here we present the most general framework for nnn-particle Hardy's paradoxes, which include Hardy's original one and Cereceda's extension as special cases. Remarkably, for any n≥3n\ge 3n≥3 we demonstrate that there always exist generalized paradoxes (with the success probability as high as 1/2n−11/2^{n-1}1/2n−1) that are stronger than the previous ones in showing the conflict of quantum mechanics with local realism. An experimental proposal to observe the stronger paradox is also presented for the case of three qubits. Furthermore, from these paradoxes we can construct the most general Hardy's inequalities, which enable us to detect Bell's nonlocality for more quantum states.
Here, we present the most general framework for n-particle Hardy's paradoxes, which include Hardy's original one and Cereceda's extension as special cases. Remarkably, for any n≥3, we demonstrate that there always exist generalized paradoxes (with the success probability as high as 1/2^{n-1}) that are stronger than the previous ones in showing the conflict of quantum mechanics with local realism. An experimental proposal to observe the stronger paradox is also presented for the case of three qubits. Furthermore, from these paradoxes we can construct the most general Hardy's inequalities, which enable us to detect Bell's nonlocality for more quantum states.
Local realistic models cannot completely describe all predictions of quantum mechanics. This is known as Bell's theorem that can be revealed either by violations of Bell inequality, or all-versus-nothing proof of nonlocality. Hardy's paradox is an important all-versus-nothing proof and is considered as ``the simplest form of Bell's theorem.'' In this work, we advance the study of Hardy's paradox based on Bell's inequality. Our formalism is essentially equivalent to the ``logical Bell inequality'' formalism developed by Abramsky and Hardy, but ours is more easily applied to experimental tests. Remarkably, we find that not only for a two-qubit two-setting case but also for a two-qubit four-setting case, we can construct stronger Hardy-type paradoxes based on Bell's inequality, whose successful probabilities can attain four times and seven times larger than the original one, respectively, thus providing more friendly tests for experiment. Meanwhile, we experimentally test the stronger Hardy-type paradoxes in a two-qubit system. Within the experimental errors, the experimental results coincide with the theoretical predictions.
As with a Bell inequality, Hardy's paradox manifests a contradiction between the prediction given by quantum theory and local hidden-variable theories. In this work, we give two generalizations of Hardy's arguments for manifesting such a paradox to an arbitrary, but symmetric, Bell scenario involving two observers. Our constructions recover that of Meng et al. [Phys. Rev. A 98, 062103 (2018)] and that first discussed by Cabello [Phys. Rev. A 65, 032108 (2002)] as special cases. Among the two constructions, one can be naturally interpreted as a demonstration of the failure of the transitivity of implications (FTI). Moreover, one of their special cases is equivalent to a ladder-proof-type argument for Hardy's paradox. Through a suitably generalized notion of success probability called degree of success, we provide evidence showing that the FTI-based formulation exhibits a higher degree of success compared with all other existing proposals. Moreover, this advantage seems to persist even if we allow imperfections in realizing the zero-probability constraints in such paradoxes. Explicit quantum strategies realizing several of these proofs of nonlocality without inequalities are provided.
A Hardy-like version of the quantum pigeonhole paradox is proposed, which can also be considered as a special kind of Hardy's paradox. Besides an example induced from the minimal system, a general construction of this paradox from an nnn-qubit quantum state is also discussed. Moreover, by introducing the projected-coloring graph and the projected-coloring graph state, a pictorial representation of the Hardy-like quantum pigeonhole paradox can be presented. This Hardy-like version of the quantum pigeonhole paradox can be implemented more directly in experiment than the original one, since it does not require some sophisticated techniques such as weak measurements. In addition, from the angle of Hardy's paradox, some Hardy-like quantum pigeonhole paradoxes may be able to set a new record for the success probability of demonstrating Bell nonlocality.
The general Hardy-like quantum pigeonhole paradoxes for n-qubit states were presented by Tang [W. Tang, Phys. Rev. A 105, 032457 (2022)]. It has been shown that each of such paradoxes can be associated with an uncolorable solution of a specific vertex-coloring problem induced from the projected-coloring graph (a kind of unconventional graph). The Hardy-like quantum pigeonhole paradoxes can even give rise to a higher suc- cess probability in demonstrating the conflict between quantum mechanics and local or noncontextual realism than the previous Hardy's paradoxes. Moreover, multiqubit states and high-dimensional states can exhibit paradoxes. In contrast to only one type of contradiction presented in the original quantum pigeonhole paradox, we discussed two kinds of three-qubit projected-coloring graph states as the minimal illustration in our work. An optical experiment to verify such a stronger paradox is performed. This quantum paradox provides innovative thoughts and methods for exploring new types of stronger multiparty quantum nonlocality. It may have potential applications in untrusted multiparty communications and device-independent random number generation.
Hardy-type paradoxes provide elegant, inequality-free proofs of quantum contextuality. We introduce a unified logical formalism for these paradoxes, termed logical Hardy-type paradoxes. For any finite quantum scenario of ideal measurements, we prove that the existence of a logical Hardy-type paradox is equivalent to logical contextuality. Specifically, strong contextuality is equivalent to logical Hardy-type paradoxes with success probability SP = 1. These results generalize prior work on (2,k,2), (2,2,d), and n-cycle scenarios. We analyze logical Hardy-type paradoxes in the Mansfield and Klyachko-Can-Binicioglu-Shumovsky (KCBS) scenarios. In the KCBS scenario, we show that there is exactly one type of logical Hardy-type paradox, achieving SP\approx 10.56% for a specific parameter setting.