A Franson-type test of Bell inequalities by photons 10.9 km apart is presented. Energy-time entangled photon-pairs are measured using two-channel analyzers, leading to a violation of the inequalities by 16 standard deviations without subtracting accidental coincidences. Subtracting them, a 2-photon interference visibility of 95.5% is observed, demonstrating that distances up to 10 km have no significant effect on entanglement. This sets quantum cryptography with photon pairs as a practical competitor to the schemes based on weak pulses.
A local hidden variable model exploiting the detection loophole to reproduce exactly the quantum correlation of the singlet state is presented. The model is shown to be compatible with both the CHSH and the CH Bell inequalities. Moreover, it bears the same rotational symmetry as spins. The reason why the model can reproduce the quantum correlation without violating the Bell theorem is that in the model the efficiency of the detectors depends on the local hidden variable. On average the detector efficiency is limited to 75%.
Any Bell test consists of a sequence of measurements on a quantum state in spacelike separated regions. Thus, a state is better than others for a Bell test when, for the optimal measurements and the same number of trials, the probability of existence of a local model for the observed outcomes is smaller. The maximization over states and measurements defines the optimal nonlocality proof. Numerical results show that the required optimal state does not have to be maximally entangled.
A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity -- with its block-universe picture -- as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On the contrary, in this paper, we note that upholding reasonable principles of finiteness of information hints at a picture of the physical world that should be both relativistic and indeterministic. We thus rebut the block-universe picture by assuming that fundamental indeterminacy itself should as well be regarded as a relational property when considered in a relativistic scenario. We discuss the consequence that this view may have when correlated randomness is introduced, both in the classical case and in the quantum one.
No abstract is provided for this article.
We report a detailed study of the noise properties of a visible-to-telecom photon frequency converter based on difference frequency generation (DFG). The device converts 580 nm photons to 1541 nm using a strong pump laser at 930 nm, in a periodically poled lithium niobate ridge waveguide. The converter reaches a maximum device efficiency of 46 % (internal efficiency of 67%) at a pump power of 250 mW. The noise produced by the pump laser is investigated in detail by recording the noise spectra both in the telecom and visible regimes and measuring the power dependence of the noise rates. The noise spectrum in the telecom is very broadband, as expected from previous work on similar DFG converters. However, we also observe several narrow dips in the telecom spectrum, with corresponding peaks appearing in the 580 nm noise spectrum. These features are explained by sum frequency generation of the telecom noise at wavelengths given by the phase-matching condition of different spatial modes in the waveguide. The proposed noise model is in good agreement with all the measured data, including the power dependence of the noise rates, both in the visible and telecom regimes. These results are applicable to the class of DFG converters where the pump laser wavelength is in between the input and target wavelength.
A novel method for the measurement of ultra small refractive index differences between two wavelengths is demonstrated. The method is based on the change of the phase matching conditions of a nonlinear process in two nonlinear crystals separated by a dispersive medium. We demonstrate the performance of our technique by measuring the refractive index difference of air between 775nm and l550nm with an air column of only 33cm.
In this short note we reply to a Comment by Callegaro et al. [Callegaro, Pennecchi, and Bich, Phys. Rev. A 102, 036201 (2020)] that points out some weakness of the model of indeterministic physics that we proposed in our work [Del Santo and Gisin, Phys. Rev. A 100, 062107 (2019)], based on what we named ``finite information quantities'' (FIQs). While we acknowledge the merit of their criticism, we maintain that it applies only to a concrete example that we discussed in our work, whereas the main concept of FIQ remains valid and suitable for describing indeterministic physical models. We hint at a more sophisticated way to define FIQs which, taking inspiration from intuitionistic mathematics, would allow the criticisms in the preceding Comment to be overcome.
No abstract is provided for this article.
Recently a new Bell inequality has been introduced (CGLMP,KKCZO) that is strongly resistant to noise for maximally entangled states of two $d$-dimensional quantum systems. We prove that a larger violation, or equivalently a stronger resistance to noise, is found for a non-maximally entangled state. It is shown that the resistance to noise is not a good measure of non-locality and we introduce some other possible measures. The non-maximally entangled state turns out to be more robust also for these alternative measures. From these results it follows that two Von Neumann measurements per party may be not optimal for detecting non-locality. For $d=3,4$, we point out some connections between this inequality and distillability. Indeed, we demonstrate that any state violating it, with the optimal Von Neumann settings, is distillable.
Entanglement appears in two different ways in quantum mechanics, namely as a property of states and as a property of measurement outcomes in joint measurements. By combining these two aspects of entanglement, it is possible to generate nonlocality between particles that never interacted, using the protocol of entanglement swapping. We investigate the communication cost of classically simulating this process. While the communication cost of simulating nonlocal correlations of entangled states appears to be generally quite low, we show here that infinite communication is required to simulate entanglement swapping. This result is derived in the scenario of bilocality, where distant sources of particles are assumed to be independent, and takes advantage of a previous result of Massar et al. [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 63}, 052305 (2001)]. Our result implies that any classical model simulating entanglement swapping must either assume that (i) infinite shared randomness is available between any two locations in the universe, or that (ii) infinite communication takes place.
