Observing Bell inequality violation beyond the qubit bound in a spinor Bose-Einstein condensate
Correlations allowed by quantum mechanics can defy any classical explanation, with Bell nonlocality standing as their most profound and operationally powerful manifestation. While nonlocality has been demonstrated across a wide range of platforms, in many-body systems it has remained limited to ensembles of qubits, leaving the observation of higher-dimensional multipartite Bell correlations an open challenge. Here we report the observation of qutrit Bell correlations in a spin-1 $^{87}$Rb Bose-Einstein condensate via the violation of a Bell witness based on collective spin observables only. Exploiting spin-exchange collisions in an ensemble of $N \simeq 3.1 \times 10^{4}$ atoms, we generate spin-nematic squeezing of $-11.8(7)$ dB and observe a violation that surpasses the minimum bound achievable by a collection of $N$ qubits, providing direct evidence of genuine multipartite qutrit Bell correlations. Our results establish spinor Bose-Einstein condensates as a viable platform for investigating high-dimensional Bell correlations in the many-body regime, and demonstrate that coarse-grained collective measurements suffice to certify the dimensionality of quantum correlations at macroscopic scales.
Authors
- Matteo Fadel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3653-0030)
- Guillem Müller-Rigat (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0589-7956)
- Xinwei Li
- Wenxin Xu
- Li You
- Qi Liu
- Junshuang Hu
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2026-11-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/13wt-lzjm
- Primary Topic
- Quantum Mechanics and Applications
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- European Commission
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich