A strong loophole-free test of local realism
Scott Glancy
Applied and Computational Mathematics Division (ACMD), ITL, NIST
Monday, September 26, 2016 15:00-16:00,
Building 225, B111
Gaithersburg
Monday, September 26, 2016 13:00-14:00,
Room 4058
Boulder
Abstract:
The principle of local realism says that any physical system has
pre-existing values for all possible measurements of the system, and
those values depend only on events in the past lightcone of the system.
Although this principle seems natural from the perspective of classical
physics, it is violated by quantum theory. In this seminar, I will
describe NIST's experiment demonstrating a loophole-free violation of
local realism using entangled photon pairs, a goal of fundamental
physics for more than 50 years. Successful execution of the experiment
required development of a high-fidelity entangled-photon source,
high-efficiency single-photon detectors, and new statistical analysis
techniques. Using a hypothesis test, we compute p-values as small as
$5.9×10^{−9}$, rejecting the hypothesis that local realism governs our
experiment.
Speaker Bio:
Scott Glancy received his PhD in physics from the University of Notre
Dame in 2004. He then joined the ACMD working in the quantum
information theory group in Boulder as a post-doc and is now a permanent
staff member. His research interests include statistical analysis of
quantum experiments, optical quantum information processing,
relativistic quantum information, and quantum foundations.
Presentation Slides: PDF
Contact: W. GriffinNote: Visitors from outside NIST must contact
Cathy Graham; (301) 975-3800;
at least 24 hours in advance.
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