State-Independent Experimental Test of Quantum Contextuality with a Single Trapped Ion

Xiang Zhang, Mark Um, Junhua Zhang, Shuoming An, Ye Wang, Dong-Ling Deng, Chao Shen, Lu-Ming Duan, Kihwan Kim

Abstract

We experimentally observed state-independent violations of Kochen-Specker inequalities for the simplest indivisible quantum system manifesting quantum contextuality, a three-level (qutrit) system. We performed the experiment with a single trapped ^{171}Yb^{+} ion, by mapping three ground states of the ^{171}Yb^{+} ion to a qutrit system and carrying out quantum operatations by applying microwaves resonant to the qutrit transition frequencies. Our results are free from the detection loophole and cannot be explained by the non-contextual hidden variable models.

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• Physical Review Letters - View
• arXiv (Cornell University) - View - PDF
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