Experimental ladder proof of Hardy's nonlocality for high-dimensional quantum systems

Abstract

Recent years have witnessed a rapidly growing interest in high-dimensional quantum entanglement for fundamental studies as well as towards novel applications. Therefore, the ability to verify entanglement between physical qudits, $d$-dimensional quantum systems, is of crucial importance. To show nonclassicality, Hardy's paradox represents ``the best version of Bell's theorem'' without using inequalities. However, so far it has only been tested experimentally for bidimensional vector spaces. Here, we formulate a theoretical framework to demonstrate the ladder proof of Hardy's paradox for arbitrary high-dimensional systems. Furthermore, we experimentally demonstrate the ladder proof by taking advantage of the orbital angular momentum of high-dimensionally entangled photon pairs. We perform the ladder proof of Hardy's paradox for dimensions 3 and 4, both with the ladder up to the third step. Our paper paves the way towards a deeper understanding of the nature of high-dimensionally entangled quantum states and may find applications in quantum information science.