Observing Bell Inequality Violation Beyond the Qubit Bound in a Spinor Bose--Einstein Condensate

Abstract

Correlations allowed by quantum mechanics can defy any classical explanation, with Bell nonlocality standing as their most profound and operationally powerful manifestation. While nonlocality has been demonstrated across a wide range of platforms, in many-body systems it has remained limited to ensembles of qubits, leaving the observation of higher-dimensional multipartite Bell correlations an open challenge. Here we report the observation of qutrit Bell correlations in a spin-1 $^{87}$Rb Bose-Einstein condensate via the violation of a Bell witness based on collective spin observables only. Exploiting spin-exchange collisions in an ensemble of $N \simeq 3.1 \times 10^{4}$ atoms, we generate spin-nematic squeezing of $-11.8(7)$ dB and observe a violation that surpasses the minimum bound achievable by a collection of $N$ qubits, providing direct evidence of genuine multipartite qutrit Bell correlations. Our results establish spinor Bose-Einstein condensates as a viable platform for investigating high-dimensional Bell correlations in the many-body regime, and demonstrate that coarse-grained collective measurements suffice to certify the dimensionality of quantum correlations at macroscopic scales.