Experimental limits on local realism with separable and entangled photons

摘要

Bell's theorem, and inequalities that stem from it, address the conflict between the explanation of key experimental observations by quantum mechanics (QM) and by models expressing Locally Realistic (LR) properties, regardless of their inclusion or exclusion of hidden variables. To demonstrate the conflict between experimental results described by QM and LR models, a physical realization of the quantum state must be chosen. Entangled photons or electrons provide the most viable choices. In this work we consider a simplified version of a Bell inequality (BI) that focuses entirely on the physical state properties of photons in order to demonstrate the difference between QM and LR correlations. While the experiment we propose is in principle similar in intent to prior Bell inequality experiments, our version requires fewer measurements, and is more advantageous in its conceptual clarity.