It is one of the peculiar features of quantum physics that some sets of measurements are incompatible in the sense that they cannot be performed simultaneously. Incompatibility is an important quantum resource as it enables Bell nonlocality and steering. Here we show that incompatibility is crucial also in certain communication tasks; we prove that quantum random access code performs better than its classical counterpart only when incompatible quantum measurements are used in the decoding task. As a consequence, evaluating the average success probability for quantum random access code provides a semi-device-independent test for the detection of quantum incompatibility. We further demonstrate that any incompatible pair of projective measurements gives an advantage over all classical strategies. Finally, we establish a connection between the maximal average success probability for quantum random access code and earlier quantities introduced to assess incompatibility.
It is one of the peculiar features of quantum physics that some sets of measurements are incompatible in the sense that they cannot be performed simultaneously. Incompatibility is an important quantum resource as it enables Bell nonlocality and steering. Here we show that incompatibility is crucial also in certain communication tasks; we prove that quantum random access code performs better than its classical counterpart only when incompatible quantum measurements are used in the decoding task. As a consequence, evaluating the average success probability for quantum random access code provides a semi-device-independent test for the detection of quantum incompatibility. We further demonstrate that any incompatible pair of projective measurements gives an advantage over all classical strategies. Finally, we establish a connection between the maximal average success probability for quantum random access code and earlier quantities introduced to assess incompatibility.
Measurement incompatibility stipulates the existence of quantum measurements that cannot be carried out simultaneously on single systems. We show that the set of input-output probabilities obtained from d-dimensional classical systems assisted with shared randomness is the same as the set obtained from d-dimensional quantum strategies restricted to compatible measurements with shared randomness in any communication scenario. Thus, measurement incompatibility is necessary for quantum advantage in communication, and any quantum advantage (with or without shared randomness) in communication acts as a witness to the incompatibility of the measurements at the receiver's end in a semi-device-independent way. We introduce a class of communication tasks---a general version of random access codes---to witness incompatibility of an arbitrary number of quantum measurements with arbitrary outcomes acting on d-dimensional systems and provide generic upper bounds on the success metric of these tasks for compatible measurements. We identify all sets of three incompatible rank-one projective qubit measurements that random access codes can witness. Finally, we present the generic relationship between different sets of probability distributions---classical, quantum with or without shared randomness, and quantum restricted to compatible measurements with or without shared randomness---produced in communication scenarios.
In contrast with classical physics, in quantum physics some sets of measurements are incompatible in the sense that they cannot be performed simultaneously. Among other applications, incompatibility allows for contextuality and Bell nonlocality. This makes it of crucial importance to develop tools for certifying whether a set of measurements respects a certain structure of incompatibility. Here we show that, for quantum or nonsignaling models, if the measurements employed in a Bell test satisfy a given type of compatibility, then the amount of violation of some specific Bell inequalities becomes limited. Then, we show that correlations arising from local measurements on two-qubit states violate these limits, which rules out in a device-independent way such structures of incompatibility. In particular, we prove that quantum correlations allow for a device-independent demonstration of genuine triplewise incompatibility. Finally, we translate these results into a semidevice-independent Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen-steering scenario.
Abstract The existence of incompatible measurements, i.e. measurements which cannot be performed simultaneously on a single copy of a quantum state, constitutes an important distinction between quantum mechanics and classical theories. While incompatibility might at first glance seem like an obstacle, it turns to be a necessary ingredient to achieve the so-called quantum advantage in various operational tasks like random access codes or key distribution. To improve our understanding of how to quantify incompatibility of quantum measurements, we define and explore a family of incompatibility measures based on non-commutativity. We investigate some basic properties of these measures, we show that they satisfy some natural information-processing requirements and we fully characterize the pairs which achieve the highest incompatibility (in a fixed dimension). We also consider the behavior of our measures under different types of compositions. Finally, to link our new measures to existing results, we relate them to a robustness-based incompatibility measure and two operational scenarios: random access codes and entropic uncertainty relations.
Connecting incompatibility in measurements with the violation of local realism is one of the fundamental avenues of research. For two qubits, any incompatible pair of projective measurements can violate Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality for some states, and there is a monotonic relationship between the level of measurement incompatibility (projective) and the violation. However, in the case of two qutrits, we exhibit that the violation of the Collins-Gisin-Linden-Massar-Popescu (CGLMP) inequality responds non-monotonically with the amount of incompatibility; we term this more nonlocality with less incompatibility. Furthermore, unlike in the CHSH case, the maximally violating state in higher dimensions depends on the amount of measurement incompatibility. We illustrate that similar patterns can also be observed in an experimentally viable interferometric measuring technique. In such a measurement scenario, we provide an explicit example of incompatible (not jointly measurable) measurements that do not violate the CGLMP inequality for any shared quantum state. We extend our study of incompatibility in the prepare and measure scenario, focusing on quantum random access codes (QRACs). Surprisingly, we show that the monotonicity of average success probability with measurement incompatibility does not hold for higher dimensions, as opposed to two dimensions, even though the maximum probability of QRAC behaves monotonically with incompatibility.
Incompatibility of quantum measurements is of fundamental importance in quantum mechanics. It is closely related to many nonclassical phenomena such as Bell nonlocality, quantum uncertainty relations, and quantum steering. We study the necessary and sufficient conditions of quantum compatibility for a given collection of n measurements in d-dimensional space. From the compatibility criterion for two-qubit measurements, we compute the incompatibility probability of a pair of independent random measurements. For a pair of unbiased random qubit measurements, we derive that the incompatibility probability is exactly 3/5. Detailed results are also presented in figures for pairs of general qubit measurements.
Unsharp measurements are increasingly important for foundational insights in quantum theory and quantum information applications. Here, we report an experimental implementation of unsharp qubit measurements in a sequential communication protocol, based on a quantum random access code. The protocol involves three parties; the first party prepares a qubit system, the second party performs operations that return both a classical and quantum outcome, and the latter is measured by the third party. We demonstrate a nearly optimal sequential quantum random access code that outperforms both the best possible classical protocol and any quantum protocol that utilizes only projective measurements. Furthermore, while only assuming that the involved devices operate on qubits and that detected events constitute a fair sample, we demonstrate the noise-robust characterization of unsharp measurements based on the sequential quantum random access code. We apply this characterization towards quantifying the degree of incompatibility of two sequential pairs of quantum measurements.