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arXiv:1912.03225 · Science Advances

Mutually unbiased bases and symmetric informationally complete measurements in Bell experiments

Armin Tavakoli, Máté Farkas, Denis Rosset, Jean-Daniel Bancal, Jędrzej Kaniewski

Published Feb 10, 2021• 77 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

-dimensional MUBs and SICs, respectively, (ii) proving device-independent certification of natural operational notions of MUBs and SICs, and (iii) using MUBs and SICs to develop optimal-rate and nearly optimal-rate protocols for device-independent quantum key distribution and device-independent quantum random number generation, respectively. Moreover, we also present the first example of an extremal point of the quantum set of correlations that admits physically inequivalent quantum realizations. Our results elaborately demonstrate the foundational and practical relevance of the two most important discrete Hilbert space structures to the field of quantum nonlocality.

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abc3847

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-dimensional MUBs and SICs, respectively, (ii) proving device-independent certification of natural operational notions of MUBs and SICs, and (iii) using MUBs and SICs to develop optimal-rate and nearly optimal-rate protocols for device-independent quantum key distribution and device-independent quantum random number generation, respectively. Moreover, we also present the first example of an extremal point of the quantum set of correlations that admits physically inequivalent quantum realizations. Our results elaborately demonstrate the foundational and practical relevance of the two most important discrete Hilbert space structures to the field of quantum nonlocality.
Symmetric, informationally complete, positive operator-valued measurements (SIC-POVM) are fundamental in quantum information and foundations of quantum theory[1]. For example, SIC-POVMs are crucial for optimal quantum state tomography, quantum key distribution with optimal trade-off between security and key rate, device-independent certification of optimal randomness from one bit of entanglement, and information-based interpretations and operational reconstructions of quantum theory. Experimentally, photonic experiments of qubit and qutrit tomography, and quantum key distribution[2] have aimed for SIC-POVMs. However, these experiments rely on specific models for parts of the experimental setups and do not allow us to test whether the target measurements are truly SIC-POVMs in a "device independent" (DI) way that is, without relying on any modelling of the devices.
The device-independent formalism is a set of tools to analyze experimental data and infer properties about systems, while avoiding almost any assumption about the functioning of devices. It has found applications both in fundamental and applied physics: some examples are the characterization of quantum nonlocality and information protocols for secure cryptography or randomness generation. This thesis contains novel results on these topics and also new applications such as deviceindependent test for dimensionality. After an introduction to the field, the thesis is divided in four parts. In the first we study device-independent tests for classical and quantum dimensionality. We investigate a scenario with a source and a measurement device. The goal is to infer, solely from the measurement statistics, the dimensionality required to describe the system. To this end, we exploit the concept of dimension witnesses. These are functions of the measurement statistics whose value allows one to bound the dimension. We study also the robustness of our tests in more realistic experimental situations, in which devices are affected by noise and losses. Lastly, we report on an experimental implementation of dimension witnesses. We conducted the experiment on photons manipulated in polarization and orbital angular momentum. This allowed us to generate ensembles of classical and quantum systems of dimension up to four. We then certified their dimension as well as its quantum nature by using dimension witnesses. The second part focuses on nonlocality. The local content is a nonlocality quantifier that represents the fraction of events that admit a local description. We focus on systems that exhibit, in that sense, maximal nonlocality. By exploiting the link between Kochen-Specker theorems and nonlocality, we derive a systematic recipe to construct maximally nonlocal correlations. We report on the experimental implementation of correlations with a high degree on nonlocality in comparison with all previous experiments on nonlocality. We also study maximally nonlocal correlations in the multipartite setting, and show that the so-called GHZ-state can be used to obtain correlations suitable for multipartite information protocols, such as secret-sharing. The third part studies nonlocality from an operational perspective. We study the set of operations that do not create nonlocality and characterize nonlocality as a resource theory. Our framework is consistent with the canonical definitions of nonlocality in the bipartite setting. However, we find that the well-established definition of multipartite nonlocality is inconsistent with the operational framework. We derive and analyze alternative definitions of multipartite nonlocality to recover consistency. Furthermore, the novel definitions of multipartite nonlocality allows us to analyze the validity of information principles to bound quantum correlations. We show that `information causality' and `non-trivial communication complexity' are insufficient to characterize the set of quantum correlations. In the fourth part we present the first quantum protocol attaining full randomness amplification. The protocol uses as input a source of imperfect random bits and produces full random bits by exploiting nonlocality. Randomness amplification is impossible in the classical regime and it was known to be possible with quantum system only if the initial source was almost fully random. Here, we prove that full randomness can indeed be certified using quantum non-locality under the minimal possible assumptions: the existence of a source of arbitrarily weak (but non-zero) randomness and the impossibility of instantaneous signaling. This implies that one is left with a strict dichotomic choice regarding randomness: either our world is fully deterministic or there exist events in nature that are fully random.
Mutually unbiased bases (MUB) are an elusive discrete structure in Hilbert spaces. Many (complete sets of) MUB are group covariant, but little is known whether they can be sharply covariant in the sense that the generating groups can have order equal to the total number of basis states, that is, d(d+1)d(d+1)d(d+1) for MUB in dimension ddd. Sharply covariant MUB, if they exist, would be most appealing from both theoretical and practical point of view. Since stabilizer MUB subsume almost all MUB that have ever been constructed, it is of fundamental interest to single out those candidates that are sharply covariant. We show that, quite surprisingly, only two stabilizer MUB are sharply covariant, and the conclusion still holds even if antiunitary transformations are taken into account. Our study provides valuable insight on the symmetry of stabilizer MUB, which may have implications for a number of research topics in quantum information and foundations. In addition, it exposes a sharp contrast between MUB and another elusive discrete structure known as symmetric informationally complete measurements (SICs), all known examples of which are sharply covariant.
Symmetric informationally complete measurements (SICs) are elegant, celebrated, and broadly useful discrete structures in Hilbert space.We introduce a more sophisticated discrete structure compounded by several SICs.A SIC compound is defined to be a collection of d 3 vectors in d-dimensional Hilbert space that can be partitioned in two different ways: into d SICs and into d 2 orthonormal bases.While a priori their existence may appear unlikely when d > 2, we surprisingly find an explicit construction for d = 4. Remarkably this SIC compound admits a close relation to mutually unbiased bases, as is revealed through quantum state discrimination.Going beyond fundamental considerations, we leverage these exotic properties to construct a protocol for quantum key distribution and analyze its security under general eavesdropping attacks.We show that SIC compounds enable secure key generation in the presence of errors that are large enough to prevent the success of the generalization of the six-state protocol.