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arXiv:1311.1525 · Physical Review Letters

Certifying the Dimension of Classical and Quantum Systems in a Prepare-and-Measure Scenario with Independent Devices

Joseph Bowles, Marco Túlio Quintino, Nicolas Brunner

Published Apr 11, 2014• 116 citations
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Abstract

We consider the problem of testing the dimension of uncharacterized classical and quantum systems in a prepare-and-measure setup. Here we assume the preparation and measurement devices to be independent, thereby making the problem nonconvex. We present a simple method for generating nonlinear dimension witnesses for systems of arbitrary dimension. The simplest of our witnesses is highly robust to technical imperfections, and can certify the use of qubits in the presence of arbitrary noise and arbitrarily low detection efficiency. Finally, we show that this witness can be used to certify the presence of randomness, suggesting applications in quantum information processing.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.112.140407

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We consider the problem of testing the dimension of uncharacterized classical and quantum systems in a prepare-and-measure setup. Here we assume the preparation and measurement devices to be independent, thereby making the problem nonconvex. We present a simple method for generating nonlinear dimension witnesses for systems of arbitrary dimension. The simplest of our witnesses is highly robust to technical imperfections, and can certify the use of qubits in the presence of arbitrary noise and arbitrarily low detection efficiency. Finally, we show that this witness can be used to certify the presence of randomness, suggesting applications in quantum information processing.
Dimensionality plays an important role in various information-theoretic tasks and can be seen as a key resource for quantum information processing. In this work, for the first time to the best of our knowledge, we report an experimental test of classical and quantum dimensions in a prepare-and-measure scenario through a nonlinear dimension witness (NDW), where the preparer and the measurer have no shared randomness. We propose a theoretical method to certify whether the generated states can be decomposed as products of lower dimensional states with the NDW, certify the dimension of the high-dimensional system, and identify whether the quantum system is irreducible in a unified picture in our experiment. To demonstrate the practicability of this method, we experimentally witness the generation of classical and quantum systems encoded in the high-dimensional orbital angular momentum (OAM) state under the effects of atmospheric turbulence. Our results show that this nonlinear dimension witness is highly robust and can be used in the presence of noise and low detection efficiency; hence, we estimate the dimension in our experiment in a detection-loophole-free manner through the NDW. We believe our work opens new avenues for dimension witnesses, especially for device-independent estimation of quantum systems and quantum communications.
Device-independent dimension witnesses provide a lower bound on the dimensionality of classical and quantum systems in a ``black box''scenario where only correlations between preparations, measurements, and outcomes are considered. We address the problem of the robustness of dimension witnesses, namely that to witness the dimension of a system or to discriminate between its quantum or classical nature, even in the presence of loss. We consider the case when shared randomness is allowed between preparations and measurements and provide a threshold in the detection efficiency such that dimension witnessing can still be performed.
It has been shown that the conditional probability distributions obtained by performing measurements on an uncharacterized physical system can be used to infer its underlying dimension in a device-independent way both in the classical and the quantum setting. We analyze several aspects of the structure of the sets of probability distributions corresponding to a certain dimension, taking into account whether shared randomness is available as a resource. We first consider the so-called prepare-and-measure scenario. We show that quantumness and shared randomness are not comparable resources. That is, on the one hand there exist behaviors that require a quantum system of arbitrarily large dimension in order to be observed while they can be reproduced with a classical physical system of minimal dimension together with shared randomness. On the other hand, there exist behaviors that require exponentially larger dimensions classically than quantumly even if the former is supplemented with shared randomness. We also show that in the absence of shared randomness, the sets corresponding to a sufficiently small dimension are negligible (zero measure and nowhere dense) both classically and quantumly. This is in sharp contrast to the situation in which this resource is available, and it explains the exceptional robustness of dimension witnesses in the setting in which devices can be taken to be uncorrelated. We finally consider the Bell scenario in the absence of shared randomness, and we prove some nonconvexity and negligibility properties of these sets for sufficiently small dimensions. This shows again the enormous difference induced by the availability (or lack thereof) of this resource.
We show that the phenomenon of quantum contextuality can be used to certify lower bounds on the dimension accessed by the measurement devices. To prove this, we derive bounds for different dimensions and scenarios of the simplest noncontextuality inequalities. Some of the resulting dimension witnesses work independently of the prepared quantum state. Our constructions are robust against noise and imperfections, and we show that a recent experiment can be viewed as an implementation of a state-independent quantum dimension witness.
We consider networks featuring preparation, transformation, and measurement devices, in which devices exchange communication via mediating physical systems. We investigate the problem of testing the dimension of the mediating systems in the device-independent scenario, that is, based on observable data alone. A general framework for tackling this problem is presented, considering both classical and quantum systems. These methods can then also be used to certify the nonclassicality of the mediating systems, given an upper bound on their dimension. Several case studies are reported, which illustrate the relevance of the framework. These examples also show that, for fixed dimension, quantum systems largely outperform classical ones. Moreover, the use of a transformation device considerably improves noise tolerance when compared to simple prepare-and-measure networks. These results suggest that the classical simulation of quantum systems becomes costly in terms of dimension, even for simple networks.
Self-testing represents the strongest form of certification of a quantum system. Here, we theoretically and experimentally investigate self-testing of nonprojective quantum measurements. That is, how can one certify, from observed data only, that an uncharacterized measurement device implements a desired nonprojective positive-operator valued measure (POVM). We consider a prepare-and-measure scenario with a bound on the Hilbert space dimension and develop methods for (i) robustly self-testing extremal qubit POVMs and (ii) certifying that an uncharacterized qubit measurement is nonprojective. Our methods are robust to noise and thus applicable in practice, as we demonstrate in a photonic experiment. Specifically, we show that our experimental data imply that the implemented measurements are very close to certain ideal three- and four-outcome qubit POVMs and hence non-projective. In the latter case, the data certify a genuine four-outcome qubit POVM. Our results open interesting perspective for semi-device-independent certification of quantum devices.