Tian Xie

Quantum measurements cannot be thought of as revealing preexisting results, even when they do not disturb any other measurement in the same trial. This feature is called contextuality and is crucial for the quantum advantage in computing. Here, we report the first observation of quantum contextuality simultaneously free of the detection, sharpness and compatibility loopholes. The detection and sharpness loopholes are closed by adopting a hybrid two-ion system and highly efficient fluorescence measurements offering a detection efficiency of $100\%$ and a measurement repeatability $>98\%$. The compatibility loophole is closed by targeting correlations between observables for two different ions in a Paul trap, a $^{171}\mathrm{Yb}^{+}$ ion and a $^{138}\mathrm{Ba}^{+}$ ion, chosen so measurements on each ion use different operation laser wavelengths, fluorescence wavelengths, and detectors. The experimental results show a violation of the bound for the most adversarial noncontextual models and open a new way to certify quantum systems.

The optical manipulation of Ba$^{+}$ ions is mainly performed by a 493 nm laser for the S$_{1/2}$-P$_{1/2}$ transition and a 650 nm laser for the P$_{1/2}$-D$_{3/2}$ transition. Since the branching ratio between the 493 nm and 650 nm transitions of a single Ba$^{+}$ ion is comparable, stabilization systems of both lasers are equally important for Doppler cooling, sub-Doppler cooling, optical pumping and state detection. The stabilization system of a 493 nm laser to an absolute Te$_2$ reference has been well established. However, the stabilization of a 650 nm laser has not been presented before. Here we report twenty spectral lines of I$_{2}$ in the range of 0.9 GHz above the resonance of the P$_{1/2}$-D$_{3/2}$ transition. We stabilize the 650 nm laser through the optical cavity to the lowest one among these lines, which is about 350 MHz apart, as the absolute frequency reference. Furthermore, we measure the frequency differences between these iodine lines and the Ba$^+$ resonance through fluorescence excitation spectrum with well-resolved dark states, which is in agreement with the theoretical expectation. The presented stabilization scheme enables us to perform precise experiments with Ba$^{+}$ ions.