Molecular orientation entanglement and temporal Bell-type inequalities

• Published in: The European physical journal. D, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics Atomic, molecular, and optical physics, 2009-06, Vol.53 (3), p.383-392
• Main Authors: Milman, P., Keller, A., Charron, E., Atabek, O.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Applications of Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos Theory; Atomic; Classical and quantum physics: mechanics and fields; Exact sciences and technology; Foundations, theory of measurement, miscellaneous theories (including aharonov-bohm effect, bell inequalities, berry's phase); Molecular; Optical and Plasma Physics; Physical Chemistry; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Quantum information; Quantum Information Technology; Quantum mechanics; Quantum Optics and Quantum Information; Quantum Physics; Spectroscopy/Spectrometry; Spintronics
• ISSN: 1434-6060; 1434-6079
• DOI: 10.1140/epjd/e2009-00134-5

We make a detailed study of Bell-type inequalities based on correlations between measurements of continuous observables performed on trapped molecular systems. We show that, in general, when an observable has a continuous spectrum which is bounded, one is able to construct non-locality tests sharing common properties with those for two-level systems. The specific observable studied here is molecular spatial orientation, and it can be experimentally measured for single molecules, as required in our protocol. We also provide some useful general properties of the derived inequalities and study their robustness to noise. Finally, we detail possible experimental scenarios and analyse the role played by different experimental parameters.