An experimental test of noncontextuality without unwarranted idealizations

TL;DR

This paper develops and experimentally tests a new approach to noncontextuality that avoids idealized assumptions like noiseless measurements, providing a more robust way to distinguish quantum from classical behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a method for testing noncontextuality without relying on idealized conditions and demonstrates its effectiveness through a photonic experiment.

Findings

Successfully ruled out noncontextual models with high confidence

Devised tests free from idealizations like noiseless measurements

Provided experimental evidence supporting quantum contextuality

Abstract

To make precise the sense in which nature fails to respect classical physics, one requires a formal notion of classicality. Ideally, such a notion should be defined operationally, so that it can be subjected to a direct experimental test, and it should be applicable in a wide variety of experimental scenarios, so that it can cover the breadth of phenomena that are thought to defy classical understanding. Bell's notion of local causality fulfills the first criterion but not the second. The notion of noncontextuality fulfills the second criterion, but it is a long-standing question whether it can be made to fulfill the first. Previous attempts to experimentally test noncontextuality have all presumed certain idealizations that do not hold in real experiments, namely, noiseless measurements and exact operational equivalences. We here show how to devise tests that are free of these idealizations. We also perform a photonic implementation of one such test that rules out noncontextual models with high confidence.