Violation of a new Wigner inequality with high angular momenta

Abstract

In the study of systems that cannot be described classically, the Wigner inequality, has received only a small amount of attention. In this paper we extend the Wigner inequality - originally derived in 1969 - and show how it may be used to contradict local realism with only coincidence detections in the absence of two-outcome measurements - that is, for any system where only one possible result of a pair of potential outcomes can be registered. It thus encapsulates a much broader class of measurement schemes than could previously violate a local-realistic inequality. This is possible due to an assumption of "extended fairness" on the measurement outcomes, which we posit is highly plausible. We then apply this inequality to a recently constructed setup with access to entangled pairs of photons with very high angular momenta, in which no previously derived local-realistic inequality could successfully be used without making very broad assumptions. To our knowledge this experiment constitutes a violation of local realism with the largest quanta to date. We thus demonstrate the versatility of this inequality under very lossy conditions.