Hardy's paradox tested in the spin-orbit Hilbert space of single photons

Abstract

We test experimentally the quantum ``paradox'' proposed by L. Hardy [Phys. Rev. Lett. 71, 1665 (1993)] by using single photons instead of photon pairs. This is achieved by addressing two compatible degrees of freedom of the same particle, namely, its spin angular momentum, determined by the photon polarization, and its orbital angular momentum, a property related to the optical transverse mode. Because our experiment involves a single particle, we cannot use locality to logically enforce noncontextuality, which must therefore be assumed based only on the observables' compatibility. On the other hand, our single-particle experiment can be implemented more simply and allows larger detection efficiencies than typical two-particle ones, with a potential future advantage in terms of closing the detection loopholes.