Despite the great success of quantum mechanics, questions regarding its application still exist and the boundary between quantum and classical mechanics remains unclear. Based on the philosophical assumptions of macrorealism and noninvasive measurability, Leggett and Garg devised a series of inequalities (LG inequalities) involving a single system with a set of measurements at different times. Introduced as the Bell inequalities in time, the violation of LG inequalities excludes the hidden-variable description based on the above two assumptions. We experimentally investigated the single photon LG inequalities under decoherence simulated by birefringent media. These generalized LG inequalities test the evolution trajectory of the photon and are shown to be maximally violated in a coherent evolution process. The violation of LG inequalities becomes weaker with the increase of interaction time in the environment. The ability to violate the LG inequalities can be used to set a boundary of the classical realistic description.
The Bell and Leggett-Garg tests offer operational ways to demonstrate that non-classical behavior manifests itself in quantum systems, and experimentalists have implemented these protocols to show that classical worldviews such as local realism and macrorealism are false, respectively. Previous theoretical research has exposed important connections between more general Bell inequalities and polyhedral combinatorics. We show here that general Leggett-Garg inequalities are closely related to the cut polytope of the complete graph, a geometric object well-studied in combinatorics. Building on tha…
In contrast to Bell's inequalities which test the correlations between multiple spatially separated systems, the Leggett-Garg inequalities test the temporal correlations between measurements of a single system. We experimentally demonstrate the violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality in a classical optical system using only the polarization degree-of-freedom of a laser beam. Our results show maximal violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality.
Leggett and Garg derived inequalities that probe the boundaries of classical and quantum physics by putting limits on the properties that classical objects can have. Historically, it has been suggested that Leggett-Garg inequalities are easily violated by quantum systems undergoing sequences of strong measurements, casting doubt on whether quantum mechanics correctly describes macroscopic objects. Here I show that Leggett-Garg inequalities cannot be violated by any projective measurement. The perceived violation of the inequalities found previously can be traced back to an inappropriate assump…
Leggett-Garg inequalities are tests of macroscopic realism that can be violated by quantum mechanics. In this letter, we realise photonic Leggett-Garg tests on a three-level system and implement measurements that admit three distinct measurement outcomes, rather than the usual two. In this way we obtain violations of three- and four-time Leggett-Garg inequalities that are significantly in excess of those obtainable in standard Leggett-Garg tests. We also report violations the quantum-witness equality up to the maximum permitted for a three-outcome measurement. Our results highlight differences…
We show that the quantum bound for temporal correlations in a Leggett-Garg test, analogous to the Tsirelson bound for spatial correlations in a Bell test, strongly depends on the number of levels $N$ that can be accessed by the measurement apparatus via projective measurements. We provide exact bounds for small $N$, that exceed the known bound for the Leggett-Garg inequality, and show that in the limit $N\rightarrow \infty$ the Leggett-Garg inequality can be violated up to its algebraic maximum.
In this paper we first analyse Leggett and Garg's argument to the effect that macroscopic realism contradicts quantum mechanics. After making explicit all the assumptions in Leggett and Garg's reasoning, we argue against the plausibility of their auxiliary assumption of non-invasive measurability, using Bell's construction of stochastic pilot-wave theories as a counterexample. Violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality thus do not provide a good argument against macrorealism per se. We then apply Dzhafarov and Kujala's analysis of contextuality in the presence of signalling to the case of the L…
The Leggett-Garg inequality holds for any macrorealistic system that is being measured noninvasively. A violation of the inequality can signal that a system does not conform to our primal intuition about the physical world. Alternatively, a violation can simply indicate that "clumsy" experimental technique led to invasive measurements. Here, we consider a recent Leggett-Garg test designed to try to rule out the mundane second possibility. We tailor this Leggett-Garg test to the IBM 5Q Quantum Experience system and find compelling evidence that qubit $Q_2$ of the system cannot be described by n…
We consider maximal violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality, obtained by maximising over all possible measurement operators, in relation to non-unitary aspects of the system dynamics. We model the action of an environment on a qubit in terms of generic quantum channels and relate the maximal value of the Leggett-Garg correlator to the channel parameters. We focus on unital channels, and hence on decoherence. In certain important cases, exact relations between the channel parameters and maximal violations can be found. Moreover, we demonstrate the existence of distinct thresholds for the chan…
Quantum mechanics presents peculiar properties that, on the one hand, have been the subject of several theoretical and experimental studies about its very foundations and, on the other hand, provide tools for developing new technologies, the so-called quantum technologies. The nonclassicality pointed out by Leggett-Garg inequalities has represented, with Bell inequalities, one of the most investigated subject. In this letter we study the connection of Leggett-Garg inequalities with a new emerging field of quantum measurement, the weak values. In particular, we perform an experimental study of …
Investigation the boundary between quantum mechanical description and classical realistic view is of fundamental importance. The Leggett-Garg inequality provides a criterion to distinguish between quantum systems and classical systems, and can be used to prove the macroscopic superposition state. A larger upper bound of the LG function can be obtained in a multi-level system. Here, we present an experimental violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality in a three-level system using nitrogen-vacancy center in diamond by ideal negative result measurement. The experimental maximum value of Leggett-Ga…
We show violations of Leggett-Garg inequalities to be possible for single-mode cat-states evolving dynamically in the presence of a nonlinear quantum interaction arising from, for instance, a Kerr medium. In order to prove the results, we derive a generalised version of the Leggett-Garg inequality involving different cat-states at different times. The violations demonstrate failure of the premise of macro-realism as defined by Leggett and Garg, provided extra assumptions associated with experimental tests are valid. With the additional assumption of stationarity, violations of the Leggett-Garg…
In 1985, Leggett and Garg put forward the concept of macroscopic realism (macrorealism) and, in analogy to Bell's theorem, derived a necessary condition in terms of inequalities, which are now known as the Leggett-Garg inequalities. In this paper, we discuss another necessary condition called no-signaling in time. It solely bases on comparing the probability distribution for a macrovariable at some time for the cases where previously a measurement has or has not been performed. Although the concept is analogous to the no-signaling condition in the case of Bell tests, it can be violated accordi…
By weakly measuring the polarization of a photon between two strong polarization measurements, we experimentally investigate the correlation between the appearance of anomalous values in quantum weak measurements, and the violation of realism and non-intrusiveness of measurements. A quantitative formulation of the latter concept is expressed in terms of a Leggett-Garg inequality for the outcomes of subsequent measurements of an individual quantum system. We experimentally violate the Leggett-Garg inequality for several measurement strengths. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate that ther…
Ambiguous measurements do not reveal complete information about the system under test. Their quantum-mechanical counterparts are semi-weak (or in the limit, weak-) measurements and here we discuss their role in tests of the Leggett-Garg inequalities. We show that, whilst ambiguous measurements allow one to forgo the usual non-invasive measureability assumption, to derive an LGI that may be violated, we are forced to introduce another assumption that equates the invasive influence of ambiguous and unambiguous detectors. Based on this assumption, we derive signalling conditions that should be fu…
The Leggett-Garg inequalities are a set of inequalities obeyed by classical systems but violated in quantum theory. Their violation has been taken as evidence that quantum theory lacks a `realistic' formulation. However in addition to realism the derivation of the Leggett-Garg inequalities relies on another, more obscure assumption of `non-invasive measurability.' The significance of this assumption and the consequences for the interpretation of violations of the Leggett-Garg inequalities have been hotly debated. In this paper we present a pedagogical introduction to the issues, focussing on t…
As is well known, the macroscopic realism and the noninvasive measurability together lead to Leggett-Garg inequalities violated by quantum mechanics. We consider tests of the Leggett-Garg type with use of the $q$-entropies. For all $q\geq1$, quantum mechanics predicts violations of an entire family of $q$-entropic inequalities of the Leggett-Garg type. Violations are exemplified with a quantum spin-$s$ system. In general, entropic Leggett-Garg inequalities give only necessary conditions that some probabilistic model is compatible with the macrorealism in the broader sense. The presented $q$-en…
We realise a quantum three-level system with photons distributed among three different spatial and polarization modes. Ambiguous measurement of the state of the qutrit are realised by blocking one out for the three modes at any one time. Using these measurements we construct a test of a Leggett-Garg inequality as well as tests of no-signalling-in-time for the measurements. We observe violations of the Leggett-Garg inequality that can not be accounted for in terms of signalling. Moreover, we tailor the qutrit dynamics such that both ambiguous and unambiguous measurements are simultaneously non-…
We investigate the violation of Leggett-Garg (LG) inequalities inquantum dots with the stationarity assumption. By comparing two types of LG inequalities, we find a better one which is easier to be tested in experiment. In addition, we show that the fine-structure splitting, background noise and temperature of quantum dots all influence the violation of LG inequalities.
We generalize the derivation of Leggett-Garg inequalities to systematically treat a larger class of experimental situations by allowing multi-particle correlations, invasive detection, and ambiguous detector results. Furthermore, we show how many such inequalities may be tested simultaneously with a single setup. As a proof of principle, we violate several such two-particle inequalities with data obtained from a polarization-entangled biphoton state and a semi-weak polarization measurement based on Fresnel reflection. We also point out a non- trivial connection between specific two-party Legge…
The Leggett-Garg inequalities impose restrictions on the values taken by some combinations of the two-time correlation functions of observables in order to be explainable by a noninvasive-realist classical model. While in the unitary dynamics, it is straightforward to compute these correlation functions, open system effects bring in subtleties. Specifically, for non-Markovian dynamics, which involves setting up of system-bath correlations, the Leggett-Garg measurements disrupt these correlations, making a full system-bath Hamiltonian approach natural. However, here we point out that the proble…
We consider temporal correlations of particles with arbitrary spin. We show that the Leggett-Garg inequality can be maximally violated irrespective of the value of spin, thus improving upon an earlier result by Kofler and Brukner [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{99}, 180403 (2007)]. Our proof is accomplished through a suitable adoption of a measurement scheme which has previously been employed for studying the spatial correlation in a system with arbitrary spin. We next consider generalized or unsharp measurements as a method for coarse graining in a quantitative manner, and show that classicality em…
We present a path analysis of the condition under which the outcomes of previous observation affect the results of the measurements yet to be made. It is shown that this effect, also known as "signalling in time", occurs whenever the earlier measurements are set to destroy interference between two or more virtual paths. We also demonstrate that Feynman's negative "probabilities" provide for a more reliable witness of "signalling in time", than the Leggett-Garg inequalities, while both methods are frequently subject to failure
The K3 quantity, introduced in a context of the Leggett--Garg inequality violation, is studied for the neutrino oscillations in matter with phenomenologically modelled dissipative environment. It is shown that the K3 function acquires different values depending on whether neutrino is Dirac or Majorana particle, provided that there is a dissipative interaction between matter and neutrinos. The difference occurs for various matter densities and can serve as a potential quantifier verifying the neutrino nature. Moreover, working within phenomenological model one can suggest the values of the matt…
We formulate entropic Leggett-Garg inequalities, which place constraints on the statistical outcomes of temporal correlations of observables. The information theoretic inequalities are satisfied if macrorealism holds. We show that the quantum statistics underlying correlations between time-separated spin component of a quantum rotor mimics that of spin correlations in two spatially separated spin-$s$ particles sharing a state of zero total spin. This brings forth the violation of the entropic Leggett-Garg inequality by a rotating quantum spin-$s$ system in similar manner as does the entropic B…
In their comment[1] on our Letter [arXiv:0907.0767], Leggett and Garg claim that they have introduced in their original paper (LG1) a dependence on measurement times. They also claim that Eqs.(HMDR1) and (LG2a) can therefore not be linked in such a way that the arguments of [arXiv:0907.0767] can be transcribed. However, (LG1) distinguishes only three time differences, and all experimental results corresponding to the same time differences are identically labeled and therefore treated as mathematically identical. We therefore cannot agree with the argumentation of Leggett and Garg: except for a…
Three flavoured neutrino oscillations are investigated in the light of the Leggett-Garg inequality. The outline of an experimental proposal is suggested whereby the findings of this investigation may be verified. The results obtained are: (a) The maximum violation of the Leggett Garg Inequality (LGI) is $2.17036$ for neutrino path length $L_{1}=140.15 $ Km and $ΔL=1255.7 $ Km.(b) Presence of the mixing angle $θ_{13}$ enhances the maximum violation of LGI by $4.6\%$.(c) The currently known mass hierarchy parameter $α= 0.0305$ increases the the maximum violation of LGI by $3.7\%$. (d)Presence of…
By combining the postulates of macrorealism with Bell locality, we derive a qualitatively different hybrid inequality that avoids two loopholes that commonly appear in Leggett-Garg and Bell inequalities. First, locally invasive measurements can be used, which avoids the "clumsiness" Leggett-Garg inequality loophole. Second, a single experimental ensemble with fixed analyzer settings is sampled, which avoids the "disjoint sampling" Bell inequality loophole. The derived hybrid inequality has the same form as the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt Bell inequality; however, its quantum violation intriguin…
It remains an open question how realist view of macroscopic world emerges from quantum formalism. For testing the macrorealism in quantum domain, an interesting approach was put forward by Leggett and Garg in $1985$, by formulating a suitable inequality valid for any macrorealistic theory. Recently, by following the Wigner idea of local realist inequality, a probabilistic version of standard Leggett-Garg inequalities have also been proposed. While the Wigner form of local realist inequalities are equivalent to the two-party, two-measurements and two outcomes CHSH inequalities, in this paper we…
We investigate the three-term Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) for a two-level quantum system undergoing parity-time (PT ) symmetric dynamics governed by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian, when a sequence of dichotomic projective measurements are carried out at different time intervals. In contrast to the case of coherent unitary dynamics, violation of LGI is shown to increase beyond the temporal Tsirelson bound approaching the algebraic maximum in the limit of the spontaneous PT symmetry breaking
We consider a macroscopic quantum system in a tilted double-well potential. By solving Hamiltonian equation, we obtain tunneling probabilities which contain oscillation effects. To show how one can decide between quantum mechanics and the implications of macrorealism assumption, a given form of Leggett-Garg inequality is used. The violation of this inequality occurs for a broader range of decoherence effects, compared to previous results obtained for two-level systems.
In two-party, two-input and two-output measurement scenario only relevant Bell's inequality is the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) form. They also provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for local realism. Any other form, such as, Clauser-Horne and Wigner forms reduce to the CHSH one. Standard Leggett-Garg inequalities are often considered to be the temporal analog of CHSH inequalities. But, they do not provide the necessary and sufficient conditions for macrorealism. There is thus scope of formulating new macrorealist inequalities different and stronger than the standard Leggett-Gar…
Macrorealism is a classical world view asserting that the properties of macro-objects exist independently and irrespective of observation. One practical approach to test this view in quantum theory is to observe the quantum coherence for macro-object in an interference experiment. An elegant and conceptually appealing approach for testing the notion of macrorealism in quantum theory is through the violation of Leggett-Garg inequality. However, a conclusive Leggett-Garg test hinges on how the non-invasive measurability criteria is guaranteed in an experiment and remains a debated issue till dat…
Leggett-Garg inequalities are an important milestone in our quest to bridge the classical-quantum divide. An experimental investigation of these inequalities requires the so called \emph{non-invasive measurements}(NIM). It has become popular to invoke weak measurements as the means of realising NIMs to very good approximation, because of their allegedly low disturbance of systems under measurement. In this note, this is shown to be a myth; it is shown, by simple estimates of errors, that for comparable levels of statistical errors, even the strong or projective measurements can be used. In fac…
In 1862, George Boole derived an inequality for variables, now known as Boolean variables, that in his opinion represents a demarcation line between possible and impossible experience. This inequality forms an important milestone in the epistemology of probability theory and probability measures. In 1985 Leggett and Garg derived a physics related inequality, mathematically identical to Boole's, that according to them represents a demarcation between macroscopic realism and quantum mechanics. Their formalism, constructed for the magnetic flux of SQUIDS, includes general features and applies als…
The Leggett-Garg inequalities serve to test whether or not quantum correlations in time can be explained within a classical macrorealistic framework. We apply this test to thermodynamics and derive a set of Leggett- Garg inequalities for the statistics of fluctuating work done on a quantum system unitarily driven in time. It is shown that these inequalities can be violated in a driven two-level system, thereby demonstrating that there exists no general macrorealistic description of quantum work. These violations are shown to emerge within the standard Two-Projective-Measurement scheme as well …
The Leggett-Garg inequalities probe the classical-quantum boundary by putting limits on the sum of pairwise correlation functions between classical measurement devices that consecutively measured the same quantum system. The apparent violation of these inequalities by standard quantum measurements has cast doubt on quantum mechanics' ability to consistently describe classical objects. Recent work has concluded that these inequalities cannot be violated by either strong or weak projective measurements [1]. Here I consider an entropic version of the Leggett-Garg inequalities that are different f…
The rise of quantum information theory has lent new relevance to experimental tests for non-classicality, particularly in controversial cases such as adiabatic quantum computing superconducting circuits. The Leggett-Garg inequality is a "Bell inequality in time" designed to indicate whether a single quantum system behaves in a macrorealistic fashion. Unfortunately, a violation of the inequality can only show that the system is either (i) non-macrorealistic or (ii) macrorealistic but subjected to a measurement technique that happens to disturb the system. The "clumsiness" loophole (ii) provides…
We report an unusual buildup of the quantum coherence in a qubit subjected to non-Hermitian evolution generated by a Parity-Time ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric Hamiltonian, which is reinterpreted as a Hermitian system in a higher dimensional space using Naimark dilation. The coherence is found to be maximum about the exceptional points (EPs), i.e., the points of coalescence of the eigenvalues as well as the eigenvectors. The nontrivial physics about EPs has been observed in various systems, particularly in photonic systems. As a consequence of enhancement in coherence, the various formulations of …
Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) studies the temporal correlation in the evolution of physical systems. Classical systems obey the LGI but quantum systems may violate it. The extent of the violation depends on the dimension of the quantum system and the state update rule. In this work, we experimentally test the LGI in a three-level trapped-ion system under the model of a large spin precessing in a magnetic field. The Von Neumann and Lüders state update rules are employed in our system for direct comparative analysis. The maximum observed value of Leggett-Garg correlator under the Von Neumann sta…
We investigate the Leggett-Garg inequalities (LGIs) for a boson system whose observables are given by deforming the Pegg-Barnett phase operators. We consider two observables and show that the quantum Fourier transform is useful in the realization of the required measurements. Deriving explicit forms for the LGIs using the coherent state $|α\rangle$ as the initial state, we explore the regimes where they are violated when the time difference between observations of the phase operators is varied. We show that the system remains nonclassical in the large amplitude limit without dissipation, howev…
In the cryptographic context, an earlier unexplored application of the temporal version of the Bell-type inequality is shown here in the device-independent (DI) scenario. This is done by using the Leggett-Garg inequality (LGI) to demonstrate the security against eavesdropping in a quantum key distribution (QKD) scheme. This typically involves a higher dimensional attack against which the standard BB84 protocol is insecure. For this purpose, we invoke an appropriate form of LGI. While the key generation is done by the usual Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) method, the security check against device …
We discuss the use of inequalities of the Leggett-Garg type (LGtI) to witness quantum coherence and present the first experimental violation of this type of inequalities using a light-matter interfaced system. By separately benchmarking the Markovian character of the evolution and the translational invariance of the conditional probabilities, the observed violation of a LGtI is attributed to the quantum coherent character of the process. These results provide a general method to benchmark `quantumness' when the absence of memory effects can be independently certified and confirm the persistenc…
We show how a test of macroscopic realism based on Leggett-Garg inequalities (LGIs) can be performed in a macroscopic system. Using a continuous-variable approach, we consider quantum non-demolition (QND) measurements applied to atomic ensembles undergoing magnetically-driven coherent oscillation. We identify measurement schemes requiring only Gaussian states as inputs and giving a significant LGI violation with realistic experimental parameters and imperfections. The predicted violation is shown to be due to true quantum effects rather than to a classical invasivity of the measurement. Using …
The Leggett-Garg inequality is a widely used test of the "quantumness" of a system, and involves correlations between measurements realized at different times. According to its widespread interpretation, a violation of the Legget-Garg inequality disproofs macroscopic realism and non-invasiveness. Nevertheless, recent results point out that macroscopic realism is a model dependent notion and that one should always be able to attribute to invasiveness a violation of a Legget-Garg inequality. This opens some natural questions: how to provide such an attribution in a systematic way? How can appare…
In the tests for macrorealism proposed by Leggett and Garg, the temporal correlation functions of a dichotomic variable Q must be measured in a non-invasive way to rule out alternative classical explanations of Leggett-Garg inequality violations. Ideal negative measurements, in which a null result is argued to be a non-invasive determination of the system's state, are often used. From a quantum-mechanical perspective, such a measurement collapses the wave function and will therefore typically be found to be invasive under any experimental check. Here, a simple modified ideal negative measureme…
Elitzur and Vaidman have proposed a measurement scheme that, based on the quantum superposition principle, allows one to detect the presence of an object --- in a dramatic scenario, a bomb --- without interacting with it. It was pointed out by Ghirardi that this interaction-free measurement scheme can be put in direct relation with falsification tests of the macro-realistic worldview. Here we have implemented the "bomb test" with a single atom trapped in a spin-dependent optical lattice to show explicitly a violation of the Leggett-Garg inequality --- a quantitative criterion fulfilled by macr…
Nonclassicality of temporal correlations pertaining to noncommutative sequential measurements is defined through the violation of macrorealistic inequalities, known as Leggett-Garg inequalities (LGI). We investigate the energy cost of the process associated with the Leggett-Garg test in the context of noiseless and Markovian noise for arbitrary initial states. We prove that in noiseless and in certain noisy scenarios, the maximal violations of LGI under the energy constraint occurs when the average energy of the process is equal to the negative of the energy of the initial state. Such a depend…
We investigate the relation between a refined version of Leggett and Garg conditions for macrorealism, namely the no-signaling-in-time (NSIT) conditions, and the quantum mechanical notion of nondisturbance between measurements. We show that all NSIT conditions are satisfied for any state preparation if and only if certain compatibility criteria on the state-update rules relative to the measurements, i.e. quantum instruments, are met. The systematic treatment of NSIT conditions supported by structural results on nondisturbance provides a unified framework for the discussion of the the clumsines…
We investigate the Leggett-Garg inequalities and the relative entropy of coherence in the Bixon-Jortner model. First, we analytically derive the general solution of the Bixon-Jortner model by a technique of the Laplace transform. So far, only a special solution has been known for this model. The model has a single state coupled to equally spaced quasi-continuum states. These couplings cause discontinuities in the time evolution of the occupation probability of each state. Second, using the analytical solution, we show that the probability distribution of the quasi-continuum states approaches t…
The violation of Leggett-Garg type inequalities (LGtIs) is studied on a two level atom, driven by an external field in the presence of a squeezed thermal reservoir. The violations are observed in the underdamped regime where the spontaneous transition rate is much smaller compared to the Rabi frequency. Increase in thermal effects is found to decrease the extent of violation as well as the time over which the violation lasts. With increase in the value squeezing parameter the extent of violation of LGtIs is seen to reduce. The violation of LGtIs is favored by increase in the driving frequency.…
We show how to realize a single-photon Dicke state in a large one-dimensional array of two- level systems, and discuss how to test its quantum properties. Realization of single-photon Dicke states relies on the cooperative nature of the interaction between a field reservoir and an array of two-level-emitters. The resulting dynamics of the delocalized state can display Rabi-like oscillations when the number of two-level emitters exceeds several hundred. In this case the large array of emitters is essentially behaving like a mirror-less cavity. We outline how this might be realized using a multi…
Quantum mechanics violates Leggett-Garg inequalities because the operator formalism predicts correlations between different spin components that would correspond to negative joint probabilities for the outcomes of joint measurements. However, the uncertainty principle ensures that such joint measurements cannot be implemented without errors. In a sequential measurement of the spin components, the resolution and back-action errors of the intermediate measurement can be described by random spin flips acting on an intrinsic joint probability. If the error rates are known, the intrinsic joint prob…
