The existence of quantum correlations that allow one party to steer the quantum state of another party is a counterintuitive quantum effect that was described at the beginning of the past century. Steering occurs if entanglement can be proven even though the description of the measurements on one party is not known, while the other side is characterized. We introduce the concept of steering maps, which allow us to unlock sophisticated techniques that were developed in regular entanglement detection and to use them for certifying steerability. As an application, we show that this allows us to go beyond even the canonical steering scenario; it enables a generalized dimension-bounded steering where one only assumes the Hilbert space dimension on the characterized side, with no description of the measurements. Surprisingly, this does not weaken the detection strength of very symmetric scenarios that have recently been carried out in experiments.
The existence of quantum correlations that allow one party to steer the quantum state of another party is a counterintuitive quantum effect that was described at the beginning of the past century. Steering occurs if entanglement can be proven even though the description of the measurements on one party is not known, while the other side is characterized. We introduce the concept of steering maps, which allow us to unlock sophisticated techniques that were developed in regular entanglement detection and to use them for certifying steerability. As an application, we show that this allows us to go beyond even the canonical steering scenario; it enables a generalized dimension-bounded steering where one only assumes the Hilbert space dimension on the characterized side, with no description of the measurements. Surprisingly, this does not weaken the detection strength of very symmetric scenarios that have recently been carried out in experiments.
High-dimensional quantum steering can be seen as a test for the dimensionality of entanglement, where the devices at one side are not characterized. As such, it is an important component in quantum informational protocols that make use of high-dimensional entanglement. Although it has been recently observed experimentally, the phenomenon of high-dimensional steering is lacking a general certification procedure. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions to certify the entanglement dimension in a steering scenario. These conditions are stated in terms of a hierarchy of semidefinite programs, which can also be used to quantify the phenomenon using the steering dimension robustness. To demonstrate the practical viability of our method, we characterize the dimensionality of entanglement in steering scenarios prepared with maximally entangled states measured in mutually unbiased bases. Our methods give significantly stronger bounds on the noise robustness necessary to experimentally certify high-dimensional entanglement.
Quantum systems of high dimensions are attracting a lot of attention because they feature interesting properties when it comes to observing entanglement or other forms of correlations. In particular, their improved resistance to noise is favorable for experiments in quantum communication or quantum cryptography. However, witnessing this high-dimensional nature remains challenging, especially when the assumptions on the parties involved are weak, typically when one of them is considered as a black box. In this context, the concept of genuine high-dimensional steering has been recently introduced and experimentally demonstrated [Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 200404 (2021)]; it allows for a one-sided device-independent certification of the dimension of a bipartite shared state by only using two measurements. Here I overcome this limitation by developing, for more than two measurements, universal bounds on the incompatibility robustness, turned into meaningful dimension certificates. Interestingly, even though the resulting bounds are quite loose, they still often offer an increased resistance to noise and could then be advantageously employed in experiments.
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering is a form of bipartite quantum correlation that is intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality. It allows for entanglement certification when the measurements performed by one of the parties are not characterised (or are untrusted) and has applications in quantum key distribution. Despite its foundational and applied importance, EPR steering lacks a quantitative assessment. Here we propose a way of quantifying this phenomenon and use it to study the steerability of several quantum states. In particular we show that every pure entangled state is maximally steerable, the projector onto the anti-symmetric subspace is maximally steerable for all dimensions, we provide a new example of one-way steering, and give strong support that states with positive-partial-transposition are not steerable.
Quantum steering captures the ability of one party, through local measurements on a shared entangled state, to affect the conditional states held by distant parties in a way that admits no local explanation. Its device-independent (DI) quantification -- requiring no characterization of any state or measurement -- has been developed in the bipartite setting, notably through the framework of assemblage moment matrices (AMMs) [Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 240401 (2016)], but has remained largely unexplored beyond it. Here, we extend the AMM framework to tripartite steering, covering both the scenario in which two parties jointly steer a third one (2-steer-1) and that in which a single party steers the remaining two (1-steer-2). For each scheme, we construct a semidefinite program that, from the observed correlations -- or merely from the violation of a Bell inequality -- yields lower bounds on the steering robustness of the underlying assemblage. As a by-product, our bounds also certify, in a DI manner, the incompatibility of the measurements performed by the steering parties.
Quantum steering, also called Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, is the intriguing phenomenon associated with the ability of spatially separated observers to steer---by means of local measurements---the set of conditional quantum states accessible by a distant party. In the light of quantum information, all steerable quantum states are known to be resources for quantum information processing tasks. Here, via a quantity dubbed steering fraction, we derive a simple, but general criterion that allows one to identify quantum states that can exhibit quantum steering (without having to optimize over the measurements performed by each party), thus making an important step towards the characterization of steerable quantum states. The criterion, in turn, also provides upper bounds on the largest steering-inequality violation achievable by arbitrary finite-dimensional maximally entangled states. For the quantification of steerability, we prove that a strengthened version of the steering fraction is a convex steering monotone and demonstrate how it is related to two other steering monotones, namely, steerable weight and steering robustness. Using these tools, we further demonstrate the superactivation of steerability for a well-known family of entangled quantum states, i.e., we show how the steerability of certain entangled, but unsteerable quantum states can be recovered by allowing joint measurements on multiple copies of the same state. In particular, our approach allows one to explicitly construct a steering inequality to manifest this phenomenon. Finally, we prove that there exist examples of quantum states (including some which are unsteerable under projective measurements) whose steering-inequality violation can be arbitrarily amplified by allowing joint measurements on as little as three copies of the same state. For completeness, we also demonstrate how the largest steering-inequality violation can be used to bound the largest Bell-inequality violation and derive, analogously, a simple sufficient condition for Bell nonlocality from the latter.
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering is a form of bipartite quantum correlation that is intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality. It allows for entanglement certification when the measurements performed by one of the parties are not characterized (or are untrusted) and has applications in quantum key distribution. Despite its foundational and applied importance, Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering lacks a quantitative assessment. Here we propose a way of quantifying this phenomenon and use it to study the steerability of several quantum states. In particular, we show that every pure entangled state is maximally steerable and the projector onto the antisymmetric subspace is maximally steerable for all dimensions; we provide a new example of one-way steering and give strong support that states with positive-partial transposition are not steerable.