Experimental test of non-classicality of quantum mechanics using an individual atomic solid-state quantum system

TL;DR

This paper reports an experimental test of quantum contextuality using a single atomic nuclear spin-1 system in solids at room temperature, providing evidence of fundamental quantum behavior beyond classical explanations.

Contribution

It demonstrates quantum contextuality in an indivisible atomic solid-state system at ambient conditions, closing the compatibility loophole present in bipartite system experiments.

Findings

Quantum contextuality confirmed in a single atomic spin system.

Experimental results cannot be explained by nonlocal entanglement.

Contextuality observed at room temperature in a natural solid-state system.

Abstract

Quantum mechanics provides a statistical description about nature, and thus would be incomplete if its statistical predictions could not be accounted for some realistic models with hidden variables. There are, however, two powerful theorems against the hidden-variable theories showing that certain quantum features cannot be reproduced based on two rationale premises of classicality, the Bell theorem, and noncontextuality, due to Bell, Kochen and Specker (BKS) . Tests of the Bell inequality and the BKS theorem are both of fundamental interests and of great significance . The Bell theorem has already been experimentally verified extensively on many different systems , while the quantum contextuality, which is independent of nonlocality and manifests itself even in a single object, is experimentally more demanding. Moreover, the contextuality has been shown to play a critical role to supply the `magic' for quantum computation, making more extensive experimental verifications in potential systems for quantum computing even more stringent. Here we report an experimental verification of quantum contextuality on an individual atomic nuclear spin-1 system in solids under ambient condition. Such a three-level system is indivisible and thus the compatibility loophole, which exists in the experiments performed on bipartite systems, is closed. Our experimental results confirm that the quantum contextuality cannot be explained by nonlocal entanglement, revealing the fundamental quantumness other than locality/nonlocality within the intrinsic spin freedom of a concrete natural atomic solid-state system at room temperature.