Experimental demonstration of nonbilocal quantum correlations

Quantum mechanics admits correlations that cannot be explained by local realistic models. The most studied models are the standard local hidden variable models, which satisfy the well-known Bell inequalities. To date, most works have focused on bipartite entangled systems. We consider correlations between three parties connected via two independent entangled states. We investigate the new type of so-called “bilocal” models, which correspondingly involve two independent hidden variables. These models describe scenarios that naturally arise in quantum networks, where several independent entanglement sources are used. Using photonic qubits, we build such a linear three-node quantum network and demonstrate nonbilocal correlations by violating a Bell-like inequality tailored for bilocal models. Furthermore, we show that the demonstration of nonbilocality is more noise-tolerant than that of standard Bell nonlocality in our three-party quantum network.