State-dependent and State-independent Experimental Test of Kochen-Specker theorem
Speaker: Prof. Kihwan Kim, Associate Professor, IIIS, Tsinghua University

Abstract: It is a fundamental problem whether the quantum phenomena would be explained by classical hidden variable models. By Kochen, Specker and Bell, it was proven that any non contextual hidden variable model is not compatible with quantum mechanics. Experimentally-testable inequalities have been proposed and tested in several experimental platforms including NMR, photons, neutrons, and ions. Recently, the quantum contexuality with an individual system was proposed and was performed with the special state of a photon system. Here we report the experimental verification of the contextual inequality with a single atomic ion system, which has near
perfect detection efficiency that closes the detection loophole. We also extend our experimental study to the state-independent proof with 13 axes measurements based on the more recent proposal.

Biography: Prof. Kim is currently an Associate Professor in IIIS, Tsinghua Univesity. He obtained his PhD in Physics from Seoul National Univ., Seoul, Korea. His research interest is quantum information.