There has been a great deal of debate surrounding the issue of whether it is possible for a single photon to exhibit nonlocality. A number of schemes have been proposed that claim to demonstrate this effect, but each has been met with significant opposition. The objections hinge largely on the fact that these schemes use unobservable initial states and so, it is claimed, they do not represent experiments that could actually be performed. Here we show how it is possible to overcome these objections by presenting an experimentally feasible scheme that uses realistic initial states. Furthermore, all the techniques required for photons are equally applicable to atoms. It should, therefore, also be possible to use this scheme to verify the nonlocality of a single massive particle.
Unlike in the case of distinguishable particles, the concept of entanglement-- not to mention, nonlocality-- remains debated in case of indistinguishable particles. Here, we show that certain existing all-versus-nothing type of proofs of contextuality or nonlocality for distinguishable particles, based on a logical contradiction, may be carried over to indistinguishable particles.
The formalism employing local complex amplitudes that resolved the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen puzzle (C. S. Unnikrishnan, quant-ph/0001112) is applied to the three-particle GHZ correlations. We show that the GHZ quantum correlations can be reproduced without nonlocality.
It is argued that Hardy-type proposals assume either nonlocality at detection, and then beg the question, or "local empty waves" (local hidden variables), and then have to accept "many worlds" and cannot prove nonlocality.
We present a variation on a gedanken experiment of Hardy [Phys. Rev. Lett. 68 (1992) 2981] that allows, for the first time, a Hardy-type nonlocality proof for two maximally entangled particles in a four-dimensional Hilbert space.
The notions of three-particle entanglement and three-particle nonlocality are discussed in the light of Svetlichny's inequality [Phys. Rev. D 35, 3066 (1987)]. It is shown that there exist sets of measurements which can be used to prove three-particle entanglement, but which are nevertheless useless at proving three-particle nonlocality. In particular, it is shown that the quantum predictions giving a maximal violation of Mermin's three-particle Bell inequality [Phys. Rev. Lett. 65, 1838 (1990)] can be reproduced by a hybrid hidden variables model in which nonlocal correlations are present onl…
In a recent Brief Report, Zheng [S-B. Zheng, PRA 66, 014103 (2002)] has given a proof of nonlocality without using inequalities for three spin-1/2 particles in the nonmaximally entangled state |psi> = cosθ|+++> + i sinθ|-->. Here we show that Zheng's proof is not correct. Indeed it is the case that, for the experiment considered by Zheng, the only state that admits a nonlocality proof without inequalities is the maximally entangled state.
We present, at the gedanken level, a possibly novel non-statistical demonstration of nonlocality for two maximally entangled particles. The argument requires only two alternative experimental contexts, only one and the same single-particle observable, and leads to a contradiction with a constrained form of local realism in 50% of experimental runs. However, the argument is based on a 'plausible' but not definitive notion of locality.
We investigate the issue of single particle nonlocality in a quantum system subjected to time-dependent boundary conditions. We first prove that contrary to earlier claims, there is no strong nonlocality: a quantum state localized at the center of a well with infinitely high moving walls is not modified by the wall's motion. We then show the existence of a weak form of nonlocality: when a quantum state is extended over the well, the wall's motion induces a current density all over the box instantaneously. We indicate how this current density can in principle be measured by performing weak meas…
We describe a scheme to demonstrate the nonlocal properties of a single particle by showing a violation of Bell's inequality. The scheme is experimentally achievable as the only inputs are number states and mixed states, which serve as references to `keep track of the experiment'. These reference states are created completely independently of one another and correlated only after all the measurement results have been recorded. This means that any observed nonlocality must solely be due to the single particle state. All the techniques used are equally applicable to massive particles as to photo…
Gisin's argument against deterministic nonlinear Schroedinger equations is shown to be valid for every (formally) nonlinearizable case of the general Doebner-Goldin 2-particle equation in the following form: The time-dependence of the position probability distribution of a particle `behind the moon' may be instantaneously changed by an arbitrarily small instantaneous change of the potential `inside the laboratory'.
Understanding the relation between nonlocality and entanglement is one of the fundamental problems in quantum physics. In the bipartite case, it is known that the correlations observed for some entangled quantum states can be explained within the framework of local models, thus proving that these resources are inequivalent in this scenario. However, except for a single example of an entangled three-qubit state that has a local model, almost nothing is known about such relation in multipartite systems. We provide a general construction of genuinely multipartite entangled states that do not disp…
Entanglement, the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox and Bell's failure of local-hidden-variable (LHV) theories are three historically famous forms of "quantum nonlocality". We give experimental criteria for these three forms of nonlocality in multi-particle systems, with the aim of better understanding the transition from microscopic to macroscopic nonlocality. We examine the nonlocality of N separated spin J systems. First, we obtain multipartite Bell inequalities that address the correlation between spin values measured at each site, and then we review spin squeezing inequalities that ad…
In this paper we extend Hardy's nonlocality proof for two spin-1/2 particles [PRL 71 (1993) 1665] to the case of n spin-1/2 particles configured in the generalized GHZ state. We show that, for all n \geq 3, any entangled GHZ state violates the Bell inequality associated with the Hardy experiment. This feature is important since it has been shown [PRL 88 (2002) 210402] that, for all n odd, there are entangled GHZ states that do not violate any standard n-particle correlation Bell inequality.
We propose a single-particle experiment that is equivalent to the conventional two-particle experiment used to demonstrate a violation of Bell's inequalities. Hence, we argue that quantum mechanical nonlocality can be demonstrated by single-particle states. The validity of such a claim has been discussed in the literature, but without reaching a clear consensus. We show that the disagreement can be traced to what part of the total state of the experiment one assigns to the (macroscopic) measurement apparatus. However, with a conventional and legitimate interpretation of the measurement process…
Recent work has argued that the concepts of entanglement and nonlocality must be taken seriously even in systems consisting of only a single particle. These treatments, however, are nonrelativistic and, if single particle entanglement is fundamental, it should also persist in a relativistic description. Here we consider a spin-1/2 particle in a superposition of two different velocities as viewed by an observer in a different relativistically-boosted inertial frame. We show that the entanglement survives right up to the speed of light and that the boosted observer would see single-particle viol…
Generic forms of the entangled states of two spin-1 (and spin-3/2) particles, along with the set of appropriate spin observables that together exhibit maximum nonlocality under the Hardy's nonlocality test are given; the maximum nonlocality is shown to be 0.09017. It is conjectured that this result holds good for a system of two spin-$j$ particles for all values of $j$. It is also shown that no maximally entangled state of two spin-$j$ particles responds to the Hardy's nonlocality test.
Standard tripartite nonlocality and genuine tripartite nonlocality can be detected by the violations of Mermin inequality and Svetlichny inequality, respectively. Since tripartite quantum nonlocality has novel applications in quantum information and quantum computation, it is important to investigate whether more than three observers can share tripartite nonlocality, simultaneously. In the present study we answer this question in the affirmative. In particular, we consider a scenario where three spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ particles are spatially separated and shared between Alice, Bob and multiple Cha…
Quantum nonlocality is typically assigned to systems of two or more well separated particles, but nonlocality can also exist in systems consisting of just a single particle, when one considers the subsystems to be distant spatial field modes. Single particle nonlocality has been confirmed experimentally via a bipartite Bell inequality. In this paper, we introduce an N-party Hardy-like proof of impossibility of local elements of reality and a Bell inequality for local realistic theories for a single particle superposed symmetrical over N spatial field modes (i.e. a N qubit W state). We show tha…
Hardy nonlocality for entangled pairs in a four-particle system
VNU University of Science, Vietnam National University（越南国立大学科学大学）；Institute for Quantum Technologies, Technology and Innovation Park, Vietnam National University（越南国立大学技术创新园量子技术研究所）
We comment on the purported violation of local realism, by a single photon induced correlations between homodyne detectors, which one can find in: New J. Phys. 10, 113024 (2008), [arXiv:0807.0109]. The claim is erroneous, due to a calculational mistake. As the result is the basis of other claims in the paper, they are unsubstantiated.
Genuine multipartite nonlocality (GMN), the strongest form of multipartite nonlocality that describes fully collective nonlocal correlations among all experimental parties, can be observed when different distant parties each locally measure a particle from a shared entangled many-particle state. For the demonstration of GMN, the experimentally observed statistics are typically postselected: Events for which some parties do not detect a particle must be discarded. This coincidence postselection generally leads to the detection loophole that invalidates a proper nonlocality demonstration. In thi…
In this paper we extend the ladder proof of nonlocality without inequalities for two spin-half particles given by Boschi et al [PRL 79, 2755 (1997)] to the case in which the measurement settings of the apparatus measuring one of the particles are different from the measurement settings of the apparatus measuring the other particle. It is shown that, in any case, the proportion of particle pairs for which the contradiction with local realism goes through is maximized when the measurement settings are the same for each apparatus. Also we write down a Bell inequality for the experiment in questio…
Comment on L. Hardy, Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 73}, 2279 (1994). It is argued that the experiment proposed by Hardy should not be considered as a single photon experiment.
We address the problem of detecting bipartite Bell nonlocality whenever the only experimental information are the intensities produced in each run of the experiment by an unknown number of particles. We point out that this scenario naturally occurs in Bell experiments with parametric down-conversion when the crystal is pumped by strong pulses, in Bell tests with distant sources and in which particles suffer different delays during their flight, in Bell experiments using living cells as photo detectors, and in Bell experiments where the pairing information is physically removed. We show that, a…
We experimentally show that nonlocality can be produced from single-particle contextuality by using two-particle correlations which do not violate any Bell inequality by themselves. This demonstrates that nonlocality can come from an {\em a priori} different simpler phenomenon, and connects contextuality and nonlocality, the two critical resources for, respectively, quantum computation and secure communication. From the perspective of quantum information, our experiment constitutes a proof of principle that quantum systems can be used simultaneously for both quantum computation and secure comm…
Although entanglement is widely recognized as one of the most fascinating characteristics of quantum mechanics, nonlocality remains to be a big labyrinth. The proof of existence of nonlocality is as yet not much convincing because of its strong reliance on Bell's theorem where the assumption of realism weakens the proof. We demonstrate that entanglement and quantum nonlocality are two equivalent aspects of the same quantum wholeness for spacelike separated quantum systems. This result implies that quantum mechanics is indeed a nonlocal theory and lays foundation of understanding quantum nonloc…
This article describes a proposed way to conduct an experiment using a correlated particle pair in an entangled state, which leaves no room for any local models.
An experiment performed in 2002 by Sciarrino et al. provided a simple proof of the nonlocality of a single photon whose wave function is multi-branched. The difference between this experiment and others similar, is that the tester-particle used by Sciarrino to "feel" this nonlocality is another photon identical to the tested one. Such an experiment be can in principle performed with fermions too, and this is the case ivestigated in this article. The novel phenomenon revealed by Sciarrino's experiment, is the particle "borrowing". If a single particle is described by a two-branched wave functio…
The ladder proof of nonlocality without inequalities for two spin half particles proposed by Hardy et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 79 (1997) 2755) works only for nonmaximally entangled states and goes through for 50% of pairs at the most. A similar ladder proof for two spin-1 particles in a maximally entangled state is presented. In its simplest form, the proof goes through for 17% of pairs. An extended version works for 100% of pairs. The proof can be extended to any maximally entangled state of two spin-s particles (with s equal or greater than 1).
Quantum nonlocality and quantum steering are fundamental correlations of quantum systems which can not be created using classical resources only. Nonlocality describes the ability to influence the possible results of measurements carried out in distant systems, in quantum steering Alice remotely steers Bob's state. Research in nonlocality and steering possess a fundamental interest for the development of quantum information and in many applications requiring nonlocal resources like quantum key distribution. On the other hand, the Stern-Gerlach experiment holds an important place in the history…
An analysis of the energy exchange by photons is presented based on single-photon Gedanken experiments and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Excluding hidden variable properties of a single photon one has to accept that the total photon trajectory undergoes causal influences from the final state separated in time and space from the initial state: nonlocality and nontemporality.
Recently the authors in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 090401 (2020)] considered the following scenario: Alice and Bob each have half of a pair of entangled qubit state. Bob measures his half and then passes his part to a second Bob who measures again and so on. The goal is to maximize the number of Bobs that can have an expected violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality with the single Alice. By taking the maximally entangled pure two-qubit state as an example, it has been constructively proved that arbitrarily many independent Bobs can share the nonlocality with the single Alice.…
An experiment demonstrating nonlocality at detection is proposed. A single-photon Michelson-Morley experiment could be performed under exactly the same conditions as well. Hence, the two experiments are "loophole free" to the same extent. It is argued that both quantum theory and relativity share the same experimental basis and derive from the same principles. Relativity and the quantum are two aspects of one and the same physical description of the world.
The nonlocal properties of the W states are investigated under particle loss. By removing all but two particles from an $N$-qubit W state, the resulting two-qubit state is still entangled. Hence, the W state has high persistency of entanglement. We ask an analogous question regarding the persistency of nonlocality introduced in [Phys. Rev. A 86, 042113]. Namely, we inquire what is the minimal number of particles that must be removed from the W state so that the resulting state becomes local. We bound this value in function of $N$ qubits by considering Bell nonlocality tests with two alternativ…
We investigate the issue of single particle nonlocality in a quantum system subjected to time-dependent boundary conditions. We discuss earlier claims according to which the quantum state of a particle remaining localized at the center of an infinite well with moving walls would be specifically modified by the change in boundary conditions due to the wall's motion. We first prove that the evolution of an initially localized Gaussian state is not affected nonlocally by a linearly moving wall: as long as the quantum state has negligible amplitude near the wall, the boundary motion has no effect.…
The question of testing the nonlocality of a single photon has raised much debate over the last years. The controversy is intimately related to the issue of providing a common reference frame for the observers to perform their local measurements. Here we address this point by presenting a simple scheme for demonstrating the nonlocality of a single photon which does not require a shared reference frame. Specifically, Bell inequality violation can be obtained with certainty with unaligned devices, even if the relative frame fluctuates between each experimental run of the Bell test. Our scheme ap…
We show that local realism applied to states characterized by a single quanta equally and coherently shared between a number of qubits (so-called W states) produces predictions incompatible with quantum theory. The origin of this incompatibility is shown to originate from the destructive interference of amplitude probabilities associated with nonlocal states, a phenomenon that has no classical analog.
We argue that quantum nonlocality of entangled states is not an actual phenomenon. It appears in quantum mechanics as a consequence of the inconsistency of its superposition principle with the corpuscular properties of a quantum particle. In the existing form, this principle does not distinguish between macroscopically distinct states of a particle and their superpositions: it implies introducing observables for a particle, even if it is in an entangled state. However, a particle cannot take part simultaneously in two or more alternative macroscopically distinct sub-processes. Thus, calculatin…
Quantum trajectories are used to investigate the EPR-Bohr debate in a modern sense by examining entanglement and nonlocality. We synthesize a single "entanglement molecule" from the two scattered particles of the EPR experiment. We explicitly investigate the behavior of the entanglement molecule rather than the behaviors of the two scattered particles to gain insight into the EPR-Bohr debate. We develop the entanglement molecule's wave function in polar form and its reduced action, both of which manifest entanglement. We next apply Jacobi's theorem to the reduced action to generate the equatio…
We show that controlled interference of a particle's wavefunction can be used to perform a quantum mechanical measurement in an incomplete basis. This happens because the measurement projects the particle into a lower dimensional subspace of the Hilbert space of the incoming wave. It allows a sender (Alice) to signal the receiver (Bob) nonlocally, by Alice's choosing to measure in a complete or incomplete basis (in general: bases of differing incompleteness). If experimentally confirmed, it furnishes a new quantum communication act: nonlocal transmission of a bit without concomitant causal com…
It is shown how a "meddlesome" photon indistinguishable from another photon of an entangled pair can affect the result of an Einstein- Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) experiment. This makes it clear the importance of the notion of field over that of particle.
We propose an experiment demonstrating the nonlocality of a quantum singlet-like state generated from a single photon incident on a beam splitter. Each of the two spatially separated apparatuses in the setup performs a strongly unbalanced homodyning, employing a single photon counting detector. We show that the correlation functions violating the Bell inequalities in the proposed experiment are given by the joint two-mode Q-function and the Wigner function of the optical singlet-like state. This establishes a direct relationship between two intriguing aspects of quantum mechanics: the nonlocal…
According to the studies of genuine tripartite nonlocality in discrete variable quantum systems conducted so far, Svetlichny inequality is considered as the best Bell-type inequality to detect genuine (three way) nonlocality of pure tripartite genuine entangled states. In the present work, we have considered another Bell-type inequality (which has been reported as the $99$-th facet of $NS_2$ local polytope in (J.-D. Bancal, et.al.,Phys. Rev.A \textbf{88}, 014102 (2013)), to reveal genuine tripartite nonlocality of generalized GHZ(Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger) class and a subclass of extended GH…
Entanglement is usually associated with compound systems. We first show that a one-dimensional (1D) completed scattering of a particle on a static potential barrier represents an entanglement of two alternative one-particle sub-processes, transmission and reflection, macroscopically distinct at the final stage of scattering. The wave function for the whole ensemble of scattering particles can be uniquely presented as the sum of two isometrically evolved wave packets to describe the (to-be-)transmitted and (to-be-)reflected subensembles of particles at all stages of scattering. A noninvasive La…
A recent paper [L. Heaney, A. Cabello, M. F. Santos, and V. Vedral, New Journal of Physics, 13, 053054 (2011)] revealed that a single quantum symmetrically delocalized over N modes, namely a W state, effectively allows for all-versus-nothing proofs of nonlocality in the limit of large N. Ideally, this finding opens up the possibility of using the robustness of the W states while realizing the nonlocal behavior previously thought to be exclusive to the more complex class of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. We show that in practice, however, the slightest decoherence or inefficiency of …
We investigate the interferometric scheme put forward by Tan, Walls and Collett [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 66}, 256 (1991)] that aims to reveal Bell non-classicality of a single photon. By providing a local hidden variable model that reproduces their results, we decisively refute this claim. In particular, this means that the scheme cannot be used in device-independent protocols.
The Klein-Gordon equation is shown to be equivalent to coupled partial differential equations for a sub-quantum Brownian movement of a ''particle'', which is both passively affected by, and actively affecting, a diffusion process of its generally nonlocal environment. This indicates circularly causal, or ''cybernetic'', relationships between ''particles'' and their surroundings. Moreover, in the relativistic domain, the original stochastic theory of Nelson is shown to hold as a limiting case only, i.e., for a vanishing quantum potential.
We investigate quantum nonlocality of a single-photon entangled state under feasible measurement techniques consisting of on-off and homodyne detections along with unitary operations of displacement and squeezing. We test for a potential violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality, in which each of the bipartite party has a freedom to choose between 2 measurement settings, each measurement yielding a binary outcome. We find that single-photon quantum nonlocality can be detected when two or less of the 4 total measurements are carried out by homodyne detection. The largest vio…
Entanglement is a fundamental resource for quantum information science. However, bipartite entanglement is destroyed when one particle is observed via projective (sharp) measurements, as it is typically the case in most experiments. Here we experimentally show that, if instead of sharp measurements, one performs many sequential unsharp measurements on one particle which are suitably chosen depending on the previous outcomes, then entanglement is preserved and it is possible to reveal quantum correlations through measurements on the second particle at any step of the sequence. Specifically, we …
Recently much interest has been directed towards designing setups that achieve realistic loss thresholds for decisive tests of local realism, in particular in the optical regime. We analyse the feasibility of such Bell tests based on a W-state shared between multiple parties, which can be realised for example by a single photon shared between spatial modes. We develop a general error model to obtain thresholds on the efficiencies required to violate local realism, and also consider two concrete optical measurement schemes.
Quantum nonlocality is revisited from a novel point of view by studying the problem of an originally classical particle immersed in the stochastic zero-point radiation field (zpf). The entire system is left to evolve until it reaches a state in which the radiative terms cancel each other in the mean in a first approximation. The ensuing approximate statistical description reduced to the particle's configuration space contains a nonclassical term due to the dispersion of the momentum, which depends on the density of particles ρ(x) and thus is nonlocal. This description is shown to be equivalent…
We simplified our previously proposed quantum bit commitment (QBC) protocol based on the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, by replacing symmetric beam splitters with asymmetric ones. It eliminates the need for random sending time of the photons; thus, the feasibility and efficiency are both improved. The protocol is immune to the cheating strategy in the Mayers-Lo-Chau no-go theorem of unconditionally secure QBC, because the density matrices of the committed states do not satisfy a crucial condition on which the no-go theorem holds.
