Bell inequality testing, a well-established method to demonstrate quantum non-locality between remote two-partite entangled systems, is playing an important role in the field of quantum information. The extension to high-dimensional entangled systems, using the so-called Bell-CGLMP inequality, points the way in measuring joint probabilities, the kernel block to construct high dimensional Bell inequalities. Here we show that in theory the joint probability of a two-partite system entangled in a Hilbert space can be measured by choosing a set of basis vectors in its dual space that are related by a Fourier transformation. We next propose an experimental scheme to generate a high-dimensional position-entangled two-photon state aided by a combination of a multiple-slit and a 4 f system, and describe a method to test Bell's inequality using correlated diffraction. Finally, we discuss in detail consequences of such Bell-test violations and experimental requirements.
Bell's theorem states that some predictions of quantum mechanics cannot be reproduced by a local-realist theory. That conflict is expressed by Bell's inequality, which is usually derived under the assumption that there are no statistical correlations between the choices of measurement settings and anything else that can causally affect the measurement outcomes. In previous experiments, this "freedom of choice" was addressed by ensuring that selection of measurement settings via conventional "quantum random number generators" was spacelike separated from the entangled particle creation. This, however, left open the possibility that an unknown cause affected both the setting choices and measurement outcomes as recently as mere microseconds before each experimental trial. Here we report on a new experimental test of Bell's inequality that, for the first time, uses distant astronomical sources as "cosmic setting generators." In our tests with polarization-entangled photons, measurement settings were chosen using real-time observations of Milky Way stars while simultaneously ensuring locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons, and that each stellar photon's color was set at emission, we observe statistically significant ≳7.31σ and ≳11.93σ violations of Bell's inequality with estimated p values of ≲1.8×10^{-13} and ≲4.0×10^{-33}, respectively, thereby pushing back by ∼600 years the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have engineered the observed Bell violation.