Frontiers of quantum physics

Abstract:

Quantum nonlocality is typically assigned to systems of two or more well-separated particles, but nonlocality can also exist in systems consisting of just a single particle when one considers the subsystems to be distant spatial field modes. Single particle nonlocality has been confirmed experimentally via a bipartite Bell inequality. In this paper, we introduce an N-party Hardy-like proof of the impossibility of local elements of reality and a Bell inequality for local realistic theories in the case of a single particle superposed symmetrically over N spatial field modes (i.e. N qubit W state). We show that, in the limit of large N, the Hardy-like proof effectively becomes an all-versus-nothing (or Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ)-like) proof, and the quantum-classical gap of the Bell inequality tends to be the same as that in a three-particle GHZ experiment. We describe how to test the nonlocality in realistic systems. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.

Abstract:

The lack of knowledge that an observer has about a system limits the amount of work it can extract. This lack of knowledge is normally quantified using the Gibbs/von Neumann entropy. We show that this standard approach is, surprisingly, only correct in very specific circumstances. In general, one should use the recently developed smooth entropy approach. For many common physical situations, including large but internally correlated systems, the resulting values for the extractable work can deviate arbitrarily from those suggested by the standard approach. © IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.