NMR investigation of contextuality in a quantum harmonic oscillator via pseudospin mapping

• Published in: Europhysics letters Vol. 113; no. 2; p. 20003
• Main Authors: Katiyar, Hemant, Sudheer Kumar, C. S., Mahesh, T. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Les Ulis EDP Sciences, IOP Publishing and Società Italiana di Fisica 01-01-2016; IOP Publishing
• Subjects: 03.65.Ta; 03.65.Ud; 03.67.-a; Approximation; Data processing; Eigenvectors; Harmonic oscillators; Inequalities; Mapping; Mathematical models; NMR; Nuclear magnetic resonance; Nuclei; Quantum phenomena
• ISSN: 0295-5075; 1286-4854
• DOI: 10.1209/0295-5075/113/20003

Physical potentials are routinely approximated to harmonic potentials. Hence it is important to know when a quantum harmonic oscillator (QHO) behaves quantum mechanically and when classically. Recently Su et al. (Phys. Rev. A, 85 (2012) 052126) have theoretically shown that QHO exhibits quantum contextuality (QC) for a certain set of pseudospin observables. Here we encode the four eigenstates of a QHO onto four Zeeman product states of a pair of spin-(1/2) nuclei. Using the techniques of NMR quantum information processing, we then demonstrate the violation of both state-dependent and state-independent inequalities arising from the noncontextual hidden variable model.