Single-photon spin-orbit entanglement violating a Bell-like inequality

Single photons emerging from q-plates (or Pancharatnam-Berry phase optical element) exhibit entanglement in the degrees of freedom of spin and orbital angular momentum. We put forward an experimental scheme for probing the spin-orbit correlations of single photons. It is found that the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) parameter S for the single-photon spin-orbit entangled state could be up to 2.828, evidently violating the Bell-like inequality and thus invalidating the noncontextual hidden variable (NCHV) theories.