Experimental violation of Svetlichny's inequality

It is well known that quantum mechanics is incompatible with local realistic theories. Svetlichny showed, through the development of a Bell-like inequality, that quantum mechanics is also incompatible with a restricted class of nonlocal realistic theories for three particles where any two-body nonlocal correlations are allowed (Svetlichny 1987 Phys. Rev. D 35 3066). In the present work, we experimentally generate three-photon GHZ states to test Svetlichny's inequality. Our states are fully characterized by quantum state tomography using an overcomplete set of measurements and have a fidelity of (84 +/- 1)% with the target state. We measure a convincing, 3.6 sigma, violation of Svetlichny's inequality and rule out this class of restricted nonlocal realistic models.