12,099 research outputs found
Testing Bell's Inequality with Cosmic Photons: Closing the Setting-Independence Loophole
We propose a practical scheme to use photons from causally disconnected
cosmic sources to set the detectors in an experimental test of Bell's
inequality. In current experiments, with settings determined by quantum random
number generators, only a small amount of correlation between detector settings
and local hidden variables, established less than a millisecond before each
experiment, would suffice to mimic the predictions of quantum mechanics. By
setting the detectors using pairs of quasars or patches of the cosmic microwave
background, observed violations of Bell's inequality would require any such
coordination to have existed for billions of years --- an improvement of 20
orders of magnitude.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures. Minor edits to closely match journal version to
be published in Physical Review Letter
A Fast and Compact Quantum Random Number Generator
We present the realization of a physical quantum random number generator
based on the process of splitting a beam of photons on a beam splitter, a
quantum mechanical source of true randomness. By utilizing either a beam
splitter or a polarizing beam splitter, single photon detectors and high speed
electronics the presented devices are capable of generating a binary random
signal with an autocorrelation time of 11.8 ns and a continuous stream of
random numbers at a rate of 1 Mbit/s. The randomness of the generated signals
and numbers is shown by running a series of tests upon data samples. The
devices described in this paper are built into compact housings and are simple
to operate.Comment: 23 pages, 6 Figs. To appear in Rev. Sci. Inst
Experimental loophole-free violation of a Bell inequality using entangled electron spins separated by 1.3 km
For more than 80 years, the counterintuitive predictions of quantum theory
have stimulated debate about the nature of reality. In his seminal work, John
Bell proved that no theory of nature that obeys locality and realism can
reproduce all the predictions of quantum theory. Bell showed that in any local
realist theory the correlations between distant measurements satisfy an
inequality and, moreover, that this inequality can be violated according to
quantum theory. This provided a recipe for experimental tests of the
fundamental principles underlying the laws of nature. In the past decades,
numerous ingenious Bell inequality tests have been reported. However, because
of experimental limitations, all experiments to date required additional
assumptions to obtain a contradiction with local realism, resulting in
loopholes. Here we report on a Bell experiment that is free of any such
additional assumption and thus directly tests the principles underlying Bell's
inequality. We employ an event-ready scheme that enables the generation of
high-fidelity entanglement between distant electron spins. Efficient spin
readout avoids the fair sampling assumption (detection loophole), while the use
of fast random basis selection and readout combined with a spatial separation
of 1.3 km ensure the required locality conditions. We perform 245 trials
testing the CHSH-Bell inequality and find . A
null hypothesis test yields a probability of that a local-realist
model for space-like separated sites produces data with a violation at least as
large as observed, even when allowing for memory in the devices. This result
rules out large classes of local realist theories, and paves the way for
implementing device-independent quantum-secure communication and randomness
certification.Comment: Raw data will be made available after publicatio
Secure self-calibrating quantum random bit generator
Random bit generators (RBGs) are key components of a variety of information
processing applications ranging from simulations to cryptography. In
particular, cryptographic systems require "strong" RBGs that produce
high-entropy bit sequences, but traditional software pseudo-RBGs have very low
entropy content and therefore are relatively weak for cryptography. Hardware
RBGs yield entropy from chaotic or quantum physical systems and therefore are
expected to exhibit high entropy, but in current implementations their exact
entropy content is unknown. Here we report a quantum random bit generator
(QRBG) that harvests entropy by measuring single-photon and entangled
two-photon polarization states. We introduce and implement a quantum
tomographic method to measure a lower bound on the "min-entropy" of the system,
and we employ this value to distill a truly random bit sequence. This approach
is secure: even if an attacker takes control of the source of optical states, a
secure random sequence can be distilled.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure
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