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# 1 Introduction: the early history of the problem

## 1 Introduction: the early history of the problem

In the introduction part of this paper we would like to give a picture to the readers, especially the young ones, of the years when the term quantum information was not yet invented, however some basic research, that later gave birth to this new branch of physics, already began.

In 1964 Bell (1964) demonstrated, that no local and realistic (that is classical relativistic) theory could ever agree with all predictions of quantum mechanics. His theorem showed that the idea of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen (1935) (EPR) of completing quantum mechanics, so that that the resulting theory would be deterministic, is impossible. The theorem of Bell raises the following profound question: can one model natural phenomena with a local relativistic theory? Moreover, the theorem provided a blueprint for an experimental test of this problem.

The consequences of the Bell theorem are so dramatic, so that experiments were needed. But there were two problems. the first one was that the original Bell’s inequality required from the quantum two-particle system to possess perfect correlations. This is possible in theory, and indeed such entangled two-particle states exits in the Hilbert Space, however in the laboratory this impossible. Simply in every experiment some noise is inevitable. The second problem was to find a source of entangled states that could give rise to observable quantum effects, that could be used in a Bell test. Both problems were solved in the trail-blazing paper by Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt (1969), the famous CHSH paper. A new type of Bell inequality was proposed, which did not require the the prefect correlations. It gives a bound of correlations describable by local realistic theories. But this is not all. The authors noticed that the two photon cascades in Calcium result in emissions of pairs of photons with entangled polarisations. I.e., a source for the pairs of entangled particles needed for a test of Bell’s inequality (now rather the CHSH one) was found, and the two photon emissions, already an interesting phenomenon, were shown to be a very exotic effect in this case. Had this effect been known to Einstein and his colleagues, most probably the EPR paper would have been completely different. Since now a lot of experimental and theoretical physics is devoted to studying entangled states (usually in the form of entangled polarisations), more, even a whole new branch of physics emerged (quantum information) which tries to understand and exploit as a resource entanglement, this pinpointing by CHSH of the first controllable source of entanglement deserves to be called a great discovery. Yes, earlier entangled states were present both is theory and experiment but their drastically non-classical properties were never observed directly. The new source enabled precisely this.

In few years time the actual experiment was performed by Freedman and Clauser (1972). To the amazement of many, Bell’s inequalities were violated by a natural phenomenon observed in the lab. The prediction of the existence of entangled states of light was experimental confirmed.

Another important step was the paper by Clauser and Horne (1974) in which they derived yet another Bell type inequality, now customarily called the CH one. This inequality has several very important features. It is testable (like the CHSH one), it implies the CHSH one (but the CHSH does not imply the CH one), and is perfect for the analysis of the threshold parameters required for a “loop-hole free” Bell test.

The dramatic consequences of Bell’s theorem, and the falsification of local realism in the experiments of Clauser, caused a reaction in camp of researchers who were sceptical about the universal validity or completeness of quantum theory. This reaction resulted in many papers in which the above mentioned “loop-holes”, i.e. imperfections of the Freedman-Clauser test of Bell inequalities, were studied, and which according to their authors could invalidate the experiment as a falsification of local realism.

Aspect et al (1982) designed and performed Bell experiments aimed a closing on of the loopholes. The same Calcium cascade was the source, but much more effective pumping (by lasers) was used, and therefore the statistics was now much better. But especially important was the experiment in which the polarisations to be measured at two far away detection stations were set effectively during the flight of the photons. This guaranteed that the measurement setting at side A was absolutely unknown at side B at the moment of the detection of the photon (and vice versa). Thus any spooky theory that could “explain” the quantum correlations via a local and realistic model, employing the “loop-hole” of the Clauser experiment (namely fixed polariser settings throughout the each experimental run) was closed. In this way it was for the first time experimentally established that realistic theories of nature must be necessarily non-local. This was the most important loophole to be closed. Other loop-holes are associated only with imperfections in the measuring devices (like detector efficiency). However since the quantum predictions are so well reproduced already in an imperfect experiment, why should we expect some deviations in a more precise one?

To summarise, the above experimental tests of local realism falsified this idea (so cherished by e.g. Einstein), and in that way solved the Einstein-Bohr debate (almost) definitely in favour of Bohr. The existence in nature of entangled states was experimentally confirmed. Much later, it was experimentally proved that entanglement can be utilised directly in quantum cryptography (the protocol of Ekert, 1991). Quantum cryptography is now already within the realm of applied physics. Entanglement is essential in the process of quantum teleportation, and in various quantum communication and quantum information schemes. The very topic of entanglement leads to such surprises like the ultra-non-classical Greenbeger-Horne-Zeilinger (1989) correlations. But in the beginning of all that were the ideas of Bell, and the early experiments. They showed with new strength, how strange is the quantum world, and that this strangeness can be experimentally observed. Now we begin to benefit from that.

## 2 Summary

Further down in the paper we shall present a brief introduction to the Bell theorem, which will lead us to the simplest Bell inequality (as far as the derivation is concerned), which is the aforementioned CHSH one. Next we shall give a brief of introduction to the surprising features of the three particle Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (1989) (GHZ) states. Finally we shall present a new method of analysis of the GHZ correlations, which is based on a numerical approach, which is effectively equivalent to the full set of Bell inequalities for correlation functions for the given problem.111The set of Bell inequalities is “full” when it constitutes the sufficient and necessary condition for the existence of local realistic model for the given process, for the given number of local settings for each of the observers. Such a set is known in the case of three qubits in the case of experiments involving two alternative settings for each observer (Weinfurter and Żukowski, 2001, Werner and Wolf, 2001, Żukowski and Brukner, 2002). In this case the full set can be expressed in the form of a single generalised inequality, and therefore it is easy to analyse. The full set of inequalities for three settings per observer can be in principle found using the method presented by Pitovsky and Svozil (2001). However, one can expect an enormous number of them.

The aim of our numerical approach is to answer the following question. Do additional possible local settings lead, in the case of three qubit GHZ states to more pronounced violations of local realism (measured by the resistance of the quantum nature of the correlations to “white” noise admixtures)?

## 3 Bell theorem

Before the advent of Bell (1964) theorem, despite Einstein’s doubts, the question of the existence of a more detailed description of individual events in the micro-world, than the probabilistic one provided by quantum mechanics, was treated as interesting, however not falsifiable, and therefore as irrelevant as the question of ‘how many angels fit on the tip of the needle”. In early sixties Bell (1966)222Bell (1966) was written before Bell (1964).  conjectured, that if there is any conflict between quantum mechanics and the realistic theories333Realism, the cornerstone of classical physics, is a view that any physical system (i.e. also a subsystem of a compound system) carries full information (deterministic or probabilistic) on results of all possible experiments that can be performed upon it., it may be confined to local444A theory is local if it assumes that information cannot travel faster than light. versions of such theories. This led him to formulate his famous theorem, of profound scientific and philosophical consequences.

### 3.1 Bell inequality

Consider pairs of particles (say, photons) simultaneously emitted in well defined opposite directions. After some time the photons arrive at two very distant measuring devices A and B operated by two characters: Alice and Bob. Their apparatuses, are have a knob which specifies, which dichotomic (i.e., two-valued, yes-no, 0-1, one bit) observable they actually measure 555E.g., for a device consisting of a polarising beam-splitter and two detectors behind its outputs, this knob would specify the orientation of the polariser; if the device is a Mach-Zehnder interferometer (plus two detectors at the two exits) the knob would set the phase shift, etc. The photon may be registered only behind one or the other output ports of such devices.. One can assign to the two possible results the numbers $`+1`$ (for yes, bit value one) and $`1`$ (for no, bit value nil)666We assume perfect situation in which the detectors never fail to register a photon.. Alice and Bob are at any time (also in a ‘delayed choice’ mode, after an emission) both free to independently choose the observables (knob settings) that they want to measure. Their choice is absolutely independent of the workings of the source, and can be done at any time.

Let us assume that the each photon pair carries full information (deterministic or probabilistic) on the values of the results of all possible experiments that can be performed on it777Note, that in the present discussion, only this idea openly goes beyond ‘what is speakable’ in quantum mechanics. (realism). Also, by locality, choices made by them which are simultaneous in certain reference frame cannot influence each other (in Alice’s region of space-time, which contains the measurement event, there is no information whatsoever available on Bob s choice, and vice versa); the choice made on one side cannot influence the results on the other side.

For simplicity, assume that Alice, chooses to measure either observable $`\widehat{A_1}`$ or $`\widehat{A_2}`$, and Bob either $`\widehat{B_1}`$ or $`\widehat{B_2}`$. Let us denote the hypothetical results that they may get for the $`j`$-th pair by $`A_1^j`$ and $`A_2^j`$, for Alice s two possible choices, and $`B_1^j`$ and $`B_1^j`$, for Bob s. The numerical values of these results ($`+1`$ or $`1`$) are defined by the two eigenvalues of the observables. Since, always either $`|B_1^jB_2^j|=2`$ and $`|B_1^j+B_2^j|=0`$, or $`|B_1^jB_2^j|=0`$ and $`|B_1^j+B_2^j|=2`$, the following relation holds

$`A_1^jB_1^j+A_1^jB_2^j+A_2^jB_1^jA_2^jB_2^j`$
$`=A_1^j\left(B_1^j+B_2^j\right)+A_2^j\left(B_1^jB_2^j\right)=\pm 2.`$ (1)
Imagine now that $`N`$ pairs of photons to are emitted, pair by pair ($`N`$ is sufficiently large, $`\sqrt{1/N}1`$). The average value of the products of the local values for a joint test (often called the Bell correlation function) during which, for all photon pairs, only one pair of observables, say $`\widehat{A_n}`$ and $`\widehat{B_m}`$, is chosen by the local observers is given by

$$E(A_n,B_m)=\frac{1}{N}\underset{j=1}{\overset{j=N}{}}A_n^jB_m^j,$$
(2)
where $`n=1,2`$ and $`m=1,2`$. The relation implies that for the four possible choices of pairs of observables the following “Bell” inequality must be satisfied

$`2E(A_1,B_1)+E(A_1,B_2)`$ (3)
$`+E(A_2,B_1)E(A_2,B_2)2,`$
(4)
(Clauser, Horne, Shimony and Holt, 1969). In the actual experiment only in part of the cases (say, approximately $`1/4`$-th) the given pair of observables would be measured, however if $`N`$ is very large, the correlation function function obtained on a randomly pre-selected sub-ensemble888The submersible is selected by the choice of observables made by Alice and Bob before the actual measurements. of emissions cannot differ too much from the one that would have been obtained for the full ensemble999With $`N\mathrm{}`$ the difference must approach zero, otherwise we would suspect that these two magnitudes pertain to two different physical processes (i.e., a systematic error must be involved). Therefore for the values of the actually chosen measurements the inequality also must hold101010The presented Bell-type argument avoids any explicit introduction of hidden variables. All local hidden variable theories satisfy Bell inequalities..

### 3.2 Bell theorem without inequalities: three entangled particles or more

If there are $`N>2`$ maximally entangled quantum systems (qubits), measurements on which are performed in $`N`$ spatially separated regions by $`N`$ independent observers, the correlations obtained in such experiment violate bounds imposed by local realism much stronger than in the case of two particles. Proofs of such violations can be limited to the experiments for which the perfect EPR-type correlations occur. That is, the EPR notion of elements of reality becomes self-contradictory.

As the simplest example, take a GHZ (Greenberger, Horne, Zeilinger, 1989) state of $`N=3`$ particles (fig.1):

$$|\psi (3)>=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|a|b|c+|a^{}|b^{}|c^{}\right)$$
(5)
where $`x|x^{}=0`$ ($`x=a,b,c`$, and kets denoted by one letter pertain to one of the particles). The observers, Alice, Bob and Cecil measure the observables: $`\widehat{A}(\varphi _A)`$, $`\widehat{B}(\varphi _B)`$, $`\widehat{C}(\varphi _C)`$, defined by

$$\widehat{X}(\varphi _X)=|+,\varphi _X+,\varphi _X||,\varphi _X,\varphi _X|$$
(6)
and

$$|\pm ,\varphi _X=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(\pm i|x^{}+\mathrm{exp}(i\varphi _X)|x\right).$$
(7)
where $`X=A,B,C`$. The quantum prediction for the expectation value of the product of the three local observables is given by

$`E(\varphi _A,\varphi _B,\varphi _c)=<\psi |\widehat{A}(\varphi _A)\widehat{B}(\varphi _B)\widehat{C}(\varphi _C)|\psi >`$
$`=sin(\varphi _A+\varphi _B+\varphi _c).`$ (8)
Therefore, if $`\varphi _A+\varphi _B+\varphi _c=\pi /2+k\pi `$, quantum mechanics predicts perfect correlations. E.g., for $`\varphi _A=\pi /2`$, $`\varphi _B=0`$ and $`\varphi _c=0`$, whatever may be the results of local measurements of the observables, for say the particles belonging to the $`i`$-th triple represented by the quantum state $`|\psi (3)`$, they have to satisfy

$$A^i(\pi /2)B^i(0)C^i(0)=1,$$
(9)
where $`X^i(\varphi )`$, $`X=A,B`$ or $`C`$ is the value of a local measurement of the observable $`\widehat{X}(\varphi )`$ that would have been obtained for the $`i`$-th particle triple if the setting of the measuring device is $`\varphi `$. By locality $`X^i(\varphi )`$ depends solely on the local parameter. The eq. (9) indicates that we can predict with certainty the result of measuring the observable pertaining to one of the particles (say $`c`$) by choosing to measure suitable observables for the other two. Hence the value $`X^i(\varphi )`$ are EPR elements of reality.

However, if the local apparatus settings are different one would have had, e.g.

$`A^i(0)B^i(0)C^i(\pi /2)=1,`$ (10)
$`A^i(0)B^i(\pi /2)C^i(0)=1,`$ (11)
$`A^i(\pi /2)B^i(\pi /2)C^i(\pi /2)=1.`$ (12)
Since $`X^i(\varphi )\pm 1`$, if one multiples side by side the eqs (9-12), the result is

$$A^i(\pi /2)B^i(\pi /2)C^i(\pi /2)=+1,$$
(13)
which contradicts (12). Thus the EPR elements of reality program breaks down. We have a “Bell theorem without inequalities” (Greenberger, Horne and Zeilinger, 1989).

## 4 More than two settings per each observer

The beautiful argument of the GHZ paper cannot be directly applied to experimental results. This just like in the case of the original Bell inequality. the reason is exactly the same. One cannot observe perfect correlations in the lab. Some noise is inevitable. Therefore one must use Bell inequalities of a new type (for the first ones see Mermin, 1990). In the standard approach to multi-qubit Bell inequalities one assumes that each observer measures two randomly chosen dichotomic observables. The results of measurements are used to compute the set of correlations functions that one needs to check if there is a violation of certain Bell inequalities.

A possible extension to this scenario is that each observer measures more than two local observables. Obviously it cannot yield worse violation of local realism than in the standard case. However, it is difficult to find analytically optimal Bell inequalities for more than two local observables and one must resort to numerical methods.

There is a computationally efficient method of finding the optimal violation of local realism for arbitrary number of observers and measured observables (Żukowski el al, 1999). It is based on well known linear optimisation algorithms. The greatest advantage of this method is that it gives necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of local realistic description. The method has been successfully applied to the problem of violation of local realism for entangled pairs of q-Nits ($`N=2,3,\mathrm{},16`$) and the numerical results of Kaszlikowski et al (2000) have been later confirmed analytically Kaszlikowski et al (2001), Collins et al (2001).

In this paper we show an application of the mentioned numerical method to the GHZ correlations, i.e., to the maximally entangled state of three qubits.

## 5 Description of the method

Let us consider the GHZ state of three qubits

$`|\psi ={\displaystyle \frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}}(|0_1|0_2|0_3+|1_1|1_2|1_3)`$ (14)
where $`|i_j`$ is the $`i`$-th state of the $`j`$-th qubit.

Each observer measures the dichotomic observable $`\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$, where $`n=a,b,c`$ ($`a`$ for the first observer, $`b`$ for the second one and $`c`$ for the third one), $`\stackrel{}{n}`$ is a unit vector characterising the observable which is measured by observer $`n`$ and $`\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ is a vector the components of which are standard Pauli matrices. This family of observables $`\stackrel{}{n}\stackrel{}{\sigma }`$ covers all possible dichotomic observables for a qubit system.

The probability of obtaining the result $`m=\pm 1`$ for the observer $`a`$, when measuring the observable characterised by the vector $`\stackrel{}{a}`$, the result $`l=\pm 1`$ for the observer $`b`$, when measuring the observable characterised by the vector $`\stackrel{}{b}`$ and the result $`k=\pm 1`$ for the observer $`c`$, when measuring the observable characterised by the vector $`\stackrel{}{c}`$ is equal to

$`P_{QM}(m,l,k;\stackrel{}{a},\stackrel{}{b},\stackrel{}{c})={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}(1+mla_3b_3+mka_3c_3+lkb_3c_3`$
$`+mlk{\displaystyle \underset{r,p,s=1}{\overset{3}{}}}M_{rps}a_rb_pc_s),`$ (15)
where $`a_r,b_p,c_s`$ are components of vectors $`\stackrel{}{a},\stackrel{}{b},\stackrel{}{c}`$ and where nonzero elements of the tensor $`M_{rps}`$ are $`M_{111}=1,M_{122}=1,M_{212}=1,M_{221}=1`$. In spherical coordinates vectors $`\stackrel{}{a},\stackrel{}{b},\stackrel{}{c}`$ read

$`\stackrel{}{n}=(\mathrm{cos}\varphi _n\mathrm{sin}\theta _n,\mathrm{sin}\varphi _n\mathrm{sin}\theta _n,\mathrm{cos}\theta _n),`$ (16)
where $`0\theta _n\pi `$ and $`0\varphi _n2\pi `$. From now on we will be considering only the measurement of the observables characterised by vectors with the zero third component, which is equivalent to putting $`\theta _n=\pi /2`$. Thus, the formula (15) acquires simpler form (we have replaced $`\varphi _a,\varphi _b,\varphi _c`$ by $`\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma `$ respectively)

$`P_{QM}(m,l,k;\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}(1+mlk{\displaystyle \underset{r,p,s=1}{\overset{3}{}}}M_{rps}a_rb_pc_s)`$ (17)
in which only the term responsible for three qubit correlations is present.

The probabilities of obtaining one of the results in the local stations reveal no dependence on the local parameters, $`P_{QM}(l|\alpha )=P_{QM}(m|\beta )=P_{QM}(n|\gamma )=\frac{1}{2}`$. Similarly, the probabilities describing two qubit correlations do not reveal dependence on the local parameters, i.e., $`P_{QM}(l,m|\alpha ,\beta )=P_{QM}(m,n|\beta ,\gamma )=P_{QM}(l,n|\alpha ,\gamma )=\frac{1}{4}`$.

If there is a white noise in the quantum channel distributing qubits to the observers we must replace the above quantum probabilities (17) by

$`P_{QM}^V(m,l,k|\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{8}}(1+mlkV{\displaystyle \underset{r,p,s=1}{\overset{3}{}}}M_{rps}a_rb_pc_s),`$ (18)
where $`1V`$ ($`0V1`$) is the amount of noise in the channel. The parameter $`V`$ is often called “visibility”.

Let us define the correlation function $`E_{QM}^V(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )`$ as

$$E_{QM}^V(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )=\underset{m,l,k=1}{\overset{1}{}}mlkP(m,l,k;\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )V\underset{r,p,s=1}{\overset{3}{}}M_{rps}a_rb_pc_s.$$

It equals $`V\mathrm{cos}(\alpha +\beta +\gamma )`$. As we see in the considered experiment there is no single and two qubit interference and the correlation function, which depends only on three-particle correlations, contains all information about correlations in the system.

In the experiment observer $`a`$ chooses between $`N_a`$ settings of the measuring apparatus $`\alpha _1,\mathrm{},\alpha _{N_a}`$, observer $`b`$ between $`N_b`$ settings $`\beta _1,\mathrm{},\beta _{N_b}`$ and ,finally, observer $`c`$ between $`N_c`$ settings $`\gamma _1,\mathrm{},\gamma _{N_c}`$. For each triple of local settings we calculate the quantum correlation function $`E_{QM}^V(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)`$, where $`i=1,\mathrm{},N_a,j=1,\mathrm{},N_b,k=1,\mathrm{},N_c`$. Thus we have a “tensor” $`Q_{ijk}(V)=E_{QM}^V(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)`$ of quantum predictions.

Within the local hidden variables formalism the correlation function must have the following structure

$$E_{LHV}(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)=𝑑\rho (\lambda )A(\alpha _i,\lambda )B(\beta _j,\lambda )C(\gamma _k,\lambda ),$$
(19)
where for dichotomic measurements

$`A(\alpha _i,\lambda )=\pm 1`$
$`B(\beta _j,\lambda )=\pm 1`$
$`C(\gamma _k,\lambda )=\pm 1,`$ (20)
and they represent the values of local measurements predetermined by the local hidden variables, denoted by $`\lambda `$, for the specified local settings. This expression is an average over a certain LHV distribution $`\rho (\lambda )`$ of certain factorisable “tensors”, namely those with elements given by $`T_{ijk}(\lambda )=A(\alpha _i,\lambda )B(\beta _j,\lambda )C(\gamma _k,\lambda )`$. Since the only possible values of $`A(\alpha _i,\lambda )`$, $`B(\beta _j,\lambda )`$ and $`C(\gamma _k,\lambda )`$ are $`\pm 1`$ there are only $`2^{N_a}`$ different sequences of the values of $`(A(\alpha _1,\lambda ),\mathrm{},A(\alpha _{N_a},\lambda ))`$, $`2^{N_b}`$ different sequences of $`(B(\beta _1,\lambda ),\mathrm{},B(\beta _{N_b},\lambda ))`$, $`2^{N_c}`$ different sequences of $`(C(\gamma _1,\lambda ),\mathrm{},C(\gamma _{N_c},\lambda ))`$ and consequently they form only $`2^{N_a+N_b+N_c}`$ tensors $`T_{ijk}(\lambda )`$.

Therefore the structure of LHV models of $`E_{LHV}(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)`$ reduces to discrete probabilistic models involving the average of all the $`2^{N_a+N_b+N_c}`$ tensors $`T_{ijk}(\lambda )`$. In other words, the local hidden variables can be replaced, without any loss of generality, by a certain triple of variables $`l,m,n`$ that have integer values respectively from $`1,\mathrm{},2^{N_a},1,\mathrm{},2^{N_b},1,\mathrm{},2^{N_c}`$. To each $`l`$ we ascribe one possible sequence of the possible values of $`A(\alpha _i,\lambda )`$, denoted from now on by $`A(\alpha _i,l)`$, similarly we replace $`B(\beta _j,\lambda )`$ by $`B(\beta _j,m)`$ and $`C(\gamma _k,\lambda )`$ by $`C(\gamma _k,n)`$ . With this notation the possible LHV models of the correlation function $`E_{LHV}(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)`$ acquire the following simple form

$$E_{LHV}(\alpha _i,\beta _j,\gamma _k)=\underset{l=1}{\overset{2^{N_a}}{}}\underset{m=1}{\overset{2^{N_b}}{}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{2^{N_c}}{}}p_{lmn}A(\alpha _i,l)B(\beta _j,m)C(\gamma _k,n),$$
(21)
with, of course, the probabilities satisfying $`p_{lmn}0`$ and

$$\underset{l=1}{\overset{2^{N_a}}{}}\underset{m=1}{\overset{2^{N_b}}{}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{2^{N_c}}{}}p_{lmn}=1$$

. Please note that not all tensors $`T_{ijk}(lmn)`$ are different (in fact only half of them differ).

The conditions for local hidden variables to reproduce the quantum prediction with a visibility $`V`$ can be simplified to the problem of maximising a parameter $`V`$ for which exists a set of $`2^{N_a+N_b+N_c1}`$ probabilities $`\stackrel{~}{p}_{lmn}`$, such that

$$\underset{l=1}{\overset{2^{N_a}}{}}\underset{m=1}{\overset{2^{N_b}}{}}\underset{n=1}{\overset{2^{N_c1}}{}}\stackrel{~}{p}_{lmn}A(\stackrel{}{a}_i,l)B(\stackrel{}{b}_j,m)C(\stackrel{}{b}_k,n)=Q_{ijk}(V).$$
(22)
Because, for the given local settings (22) imposes linear constraints on the probabilities and the visibility, and we are looking for the maximal $`V`$, the problem can be solved by means of linear programming methods of optimisation.

We want to find such local settings for which this maximal $`V`$ reaches its minimum. This is due to the fact that in such a case the noise admixture, $`1V`$, is maximal. in such a case the non-classical matrix of quantum correlations reveals the strongest resistance with respect to white noise admixtures. This can be treated as a measure of the “strength” of violation of local realism.

The set of linear equations (22) constitute a certain region in a $`D=2^{N_a+N_b+N_c1}+1`$ dimensional real space- $`2^{N_a+N_b+N_c1}`$ probabilities plus the visibility. The border of the region consists of hyper planes each defined by one of the equations belonging to (22); thus, if the equations do not contradict each other the region is a convex set with a certain number of vertices. On this convex set we define a linear function (cost function) $`f(p_1,\mathrm{},p_{2^{N_a+N_b+N_c1}},V)=V`$, and we seek its maximum.

The fundamental theorem of linear programming states that the cost function reaches its maximum at one of the vertices. Hence, it suffices to find numerical values of the cost function calculated at the vertices and then pick up the largest one. Of course, the algorithmic implementation of this simple idea is not so easy, for we must have a method of finding the vertices, for which the value of the function continually increases, so that the program reaches the optimal solution in the least possible number of steps. Calculating the value of the cost function at every vertex would take too much time, as there may be too many of them.

There are lots of excellent algorithms which solve the above optimisation problem. Here we have used the algorithm invented by Gondzio (1995) and implemented in the commercial code HOPDM 2.30 (Higher Order Primal-Dual Method) written in C programming language.

However, finding the maximal visibility for the given local settings of the measuring apparatus is not enough. We should remember that our main goal is to find such local setting for which the threshold visibility is the lowest one. The maximal visibility $`V^{max}`$ returned by the HOPDM 2.30 procedure depends on the local settings entering right hand side of (22). Thus, returned $`V^{max}`$ can be treated as the many variable function, which depends on $`N_a+N_b+N_c`$ angles in the coplanar case and two times more in the non coplanar one, i.e., $`V^{max}=V^{max}(\stackrel{}{a}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{}{a}_{N_a},\stackrel{}{b}_1,\mathrm{},\stackrel{}{b}_{N_b})`$.

Hence, we should also have a numerical procedure which finds the minimum of $`V^{max}`$. Because we do not know much about the structure of $`V^{max}`$ as a function of the local settings the only reasonable method of finding the $`V^{max}`$ minimum is the Downhill Simplex Method (DSM) (Nelder and Mead, 1965). The way it works toward finding the extremum is the following. If the dimension of the domain of a function is $`Dim`$ the DSM randomly generates $`Dim+1`$ points. This way it creates a starting simplex with vertices being the points. these points. Then it calculates the value of a function at the vertices and starts exploring the space by stretching and contracting the simplex. In every step if it finds a vertex where the value of the function is lower then in others it ”goes” in this direction.

We have checked four cases: $`N_a=N_b=N_c=2,3,4,5`$ with the result that the threshold visibility admitting local hidden variable model is $`V=\frac{1}{2}`$. This result is in concurrence with the threshold visibility obtained earlier in Mermin (1990) with the usage of appropriate Bell inequalities.

Because of the complexity of the space being the domain of the $`V^{max}`$ function to find a global minimum for the case $`N_a=N_b=N_c=2,3`$ we have run the amoeba procedure 30 times with varied starting points. For $`N_a=N_b=N_c=4`$ we calculated $`V^{max}`$ on $`9000`$ randomly chosen sets of the local settings whereas in the case $`N_a=N_b=N_c=5`$ we have calculated $`V^{max}`$ on the following set of the local settings: $`\alpha _1=0,\alpha _2=\pi /8,\alpha _3=\pi /4,\alpha _4=3\pi /8,\alpha _5=\pi /2,\beta _1=\gamma _1=\pi /4,\beta _2=\gamma _2=\pi /8,\beta _3=\gamma _3=0,\beta _4=\gamma _4=\pi /8,\beta _5=\gamma _5=\pi /4`$. In both cases the only reason for abandoning the DSM method was the exploding computational time.

An interesting feature of the results is that, the threshold visibility $`V^{max}=\frac{1}{2}`$ is always achieved for such settings of the measuring apparatus which include as a subset the settings giving maximal violation of the inequalities. Similar result was obtained for two maximally entangled qubit, also using the numerical method, by Żukowski et al (1999) and Massar et al (2002).

## 6 Conclusions

The presented numerical approach to the three qubit GHZ correlations gives the sufficient and necessary conditions for the existence of local hidden variables for the given experimental situation, i.e., for the fixed number of positions of the measuring apparatus at each side of the experiment.

For the cases of $`N_a=N_b=N_c=2,3`$ we have found such numerical values of the local settings for which the critical visibility admitting local hidden variables has the lowest possible value. Up to the possibility that the DSM procedure has not succeeded in finding the global minimum of $`V^{max}`$ the visibility $`V=\frac{1}{2}`$ is the ultimate limit drawing the borderline between local hidden variables and quantum mechanics for these cases, i.e., for 2 and 3 settings of the measuring apparatus at each side of the experiment.

For $`N_a=N_b=N_c=4`$ the critical visibility returned by the program for every random choice of local settings has been always higher than $`\frac{1}{2}`$.

In the last case, i.e., for $`N_a=N_b=N_c=5`$, we have found the threshold value for local settings including as a subset settings giving maximal violation of a three particle Bell-type inequality with the result again $`V^{max}=\frac{1}{2}`$ (the DSM has not been used).

Unfortunately, due to the computer time and memory limitations we could not check more settings of the measuring apparatus. Nevertheless, one could possibly conjecture that increasing the number of settings will not lead to a critical visibility lower than $`V=\frac{1}{2}`$. This quite surprising especially when one considers the fact that already three settings per observation site lower the critical visibility for four GHZ qubits or more (Żukowski and Kaszlikowski, 1997).

The important aspect of the presented analysis of the GHZ correlations is that the numerical approach can be directly applied to measurement data.

DK acknowledges NUS Grant WBS: R-144-000-089-112. MZ acknowledges KBN Grant PBZ KBN 043/P03/2001.

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