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arXiv:0803.4290 · New Journal of Physics

A convergent hierarchy of semidefinite programs characterizing the set of quantum correlations

Miguel Navascués, Stefano Pironio, Antonio Acín

Published Jul 8, 2008• 724 citations
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Abstract

We are interested in the problem of characterizing the correlations that arise when performing local measurements on separate quantum systems. In a previous work (Navascués et al 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 010401), we introduced an infinite hierarchy of conditions necessarily satisfied by any set of quantum correlations. Each of these conditions could be tested using semidefinite programming. We present here new results concerning this hierarchy. We prove in particular that it is complete, in the sense that any set of correlations satisfying every condition in the hierarchy has a quantum representation in terms of commuting measurements. Although our tests are conceived to rule out non-quantum correlations, and can in principle certify that a set of correlations is quantum only in the asymptotic limit where all tests are satisfied, we show that in some cases it is possible to conclude that a given set of correlations is quantum after performing only a finite number of tests. We provide a criterion to detect when such a situation arises, and we explain how to reconstruct the quantum states and measurement operators reproducing the given correlations. Finally, we present several applications of our approach. We use it in particular to bound the quantum violation of various Bell inequalities.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/10/7/073013

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We are interested in the problem of characterizing the correlations that arise when performing local measurements on separate quantum systems. In a previous work (Navascués et al 2007 Phys. Rev. Lett. 98 010401), we introduced an infinite hierarchy of conditions necessarily satisfied by any set of quantum correlations. Each of these conditions could be tested using semidefinite programming. We present here new results concerning this hierarchy. We prove in particular that it is complete, in the sense that any set of correlations satisfying every condition in the hierarchy has a quantum representation in terms of commuting measurements. Although our tests are conceived to rule out non-quantum correlations, and can in principle certify that a set of correlations is quantum only in the asymptotic limit where all tests are satisfied, we show that in some cases it is possible to conclude that a given set of correlations is quantum after performing only a finite number of tests. We provide a criterion to detect when such a situation arises, and we explain how to reconstruct the quantum states and measurement operators reproducing the given correlations. Finally, we present several applications of our approach. We use it in particular to bound the quantum violation of various Bell inequalities.
We introduce a hierarchy of conditions necessarily satisfied by any distribution P_{alphabeta} representing the probabilities for two separate observers to obtain outcomes alpha and beta when making local measurements on a shared quantum state. Each condition in this hierarchy is formulated as a semidefinite program. Among other applications, our approach can be used to obtain upper bounds on the quantum violation of an arbitrary Bell inequality. It yields, for instance, tight bounds for the violations of the Collins et al. inequalities.
The future progress of semi-device independent quantum information science depends crucially on our ability to bound the strength of the nonlocal correlations achievable with finite dimensional quantum resources. In this work, we characterize quantum nonlocality under local dimension constraints via a complete hierarchy of semidefinite programming relaxations. In the bipartite case, we find that the first level of the hierarchy returns non-trivial bounds in all cases considered, allowing to study nonlocality scenarios with four measurement settings on one side and twelve (12) on the other in a normal desktop. In the tripartite case, we apply the hierarchy to derive a Bell-type inequality that can only be violated when each of the three parties has local dimension greater than two, hence certifying three-dimensional tripartite entanglement in a device independent way. Finally, we show how the new method can be trivially modified to detect non-separable measurements in two-qubit scenarios.
We study and extend the semidefinite programming (SDP) hierarchies introduced in Navascu\'es and V\'ertesi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 020501 (2015)] for the characterization of the statistical correlations arising from finite-dimensional quantum systems. First, we introduce the dimension-constrained noncommutative polynomial optimization (NPO) paradigm, where a number of polynomial inequalities are defined and optimization is conducted over all feasible operator representations of bounded dimensionality. Important problems in device-independent and semi-device-independent quantum information science can be formulated (or almost formulated) in this framework. We present effective SDP hierarchies to attack the general dimension-constrained NPO problem (and related ones) and prove their asymptotic convergence. To illustrate the power of these relaxations, we use them to derive a number of dimension witnesses for temporal and Bell-type correlation scenarios, and also to bound the probability of success of quantum random access codes.
A key goal in the foundations of quantum mechanics is to identify operational constraints characterizing physical theories. Bell inequalities do so for classical probability theory, while Tsirelson's bound provides a first step for quantum mechanics. Here, we address the dual question: Can one certify that all correlations predicted by quantum theory are actually realizable? In this work, we construct a finite number of two-body correlations such that the only probabilistic theory that (1) realizes them, and (2) does so in a way that is stable under iterated teleportation, is quantum theory. For nnn quantum systems of dimension ddd each, Condition (1) can be verified using poly⁡(d,n)\operatorname{poly}(d,n)poly(d,n) measurement settings. Condition (2) may be understood as a hierarchy of tests, one for each number NNN of teleportation steps. There is thus a sense in which finite-dimensional quantum theory can be self-tested. In particular, one can certify the existence of Bell inequality violations larger than any that have been directly observed.
We present a method to certify the presence of Bell correlations in experimentally observed statistics, and to obtain new Bell inequalities. Our approach is based on relaxing the conditions defining the set of correlations obeying a local hidden variable model, yielding a convergent hierarchy of semidefinite programs (SDP's). Because the size of these SDP's is independent of the number of parties involved, this technique allows us to characterize correlations in many-body systems. As an example, we illustrate our method with the experimental data presented in Science 352, 441 (2016)SCIEAS0036-807510.1126/science.aad8665.
Identifying whether a state family admits an irreducible quantum advantage is a fundamental task in quantum resource theory and quantum information processing. Here we study classically simulable state families, namely those residing within the convex hull of pairwise commuting families and therefore admitting a classical explanation. We develop a complete semidefinite-programming (SDP) hierarchy characterizing the set of classically simulable state families in arbitrary finite dimension. The key step is to reformulate classical simulability as a feasibility problem over deterministic response functions and auxiliary positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs) simulable by rank-one projective measurements. We establish a complete SDP hierarchy for rank-one projectively simulable POVMs and transfer the resulting characterization to state families, yielding both primal feasibility tests and dual affine witnesses certifying failure of classical simulability. Applying the hierarchy to state families mixed with depolarizing noise gives computable upper bounds on the critical classical visibility, which are matched by explicit classical simulations in several symmetric examples. These results provide a systematic convex-optimization framework for certifying classical simulability of quantum state families.