Self-testing is a procedure for characterizing quantum resources with the minimal level of trust. Up to now it has been used as a device-independent certification tool for particular quantum measurements, channels, and pure entangled states. In this work we introduce the concept of self-testing more general entanglement structures. More precisely, we present the first self-tests of an entangled subspace-the five-qubit code and the toric code. We show that all quantum states maximally violating a suitably chosen Bell inequality must belong to the corresponding code subspace, which remarkably includes also mixed states.
Self-testing is a procedure for characterizing quantum resources with the minimal level of trust. Up to now it has been used as a device-independent certification tool for particular quantum measurements, channels, and pure entangled states. In this work we introduce the concept of self-testing more general entanglement structures. More precisely, we present the first self-tests of an entangled subspace-the five-qubit code and the toric code. We show that all quantum states maximally violating a suitably chosen Bell inequality must belong to the corresponding code subspace, which remarkably includes also mixed states.
Self-testing is a procedure for characterising quantum resources with the minimal level of trust. Up to now it has been used as a device-independent certification tool for particular quantum measurements, channels and pure entangled states. In this work we introduce the concept of self-testing more general entanglement structures. More precisely, we present the first self-tests of an entangled subspace - the five-qubit code and the toric code. We show that all quantum states maximally violating a suitably chosen Bell inequality must belong to the corresponding code subspace, which remarkably includes also mixed states.
Self-testing provides a device-independent framework for certifying quantum properties based solely on input-output statistics while treating quantum devices as black boxes. It has evolved significantly from its origins in bipartite systems to applications in multipartite entanglement and, more recently, genuinely entangled subspaces. Notably, It has been revealed that the logical subspaces of numerous stabilizer quantum error correction codes are exclusively composed of genuinely multipartite entangled states, opening new avenues for developing device-independent tools to characterize these subspaces. In this work, we leverage the self-testing technique to certify genuinely entangled logical subspaces within the five-qubit code using both photonic and superconducting platforms. This is achieved by preparing informationally complete logical states, simulating Pauli errors on a physical qubit, and testing several stabilizer-formalized Bell inequalities. Our certification is supported by an extractability measure of at least0.828±0.006and0.621±0.007for the photonic and superconducting systems, respectively. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of device-independent certification of general entangled quantum structures in experimental settings, extending beyond quantum states and quantum measurements.
Abstract Self-testing was originally introduced as a device-independent method of certification of entangled quantum states and local measurements performed on them. Recently, in (Baccari et al 2020 Phys. Rev. Lett. 125 260507) the notion of state self-testing has been generalized to entangled subspaces and the first self-testing strategies for exemplary genuinely entangled subspaces have been given. The main aim of our work is to pursue this line of research and to address the question how ‘large’ (in terms of dimension) are genuinely entangled subspaces that can be self-tested, concentrating on the multiqubit stabilizer formalism. To this end, we first introduce a framework allowing to efficiently check whether a given stabilizer subspace is genuinely entangled. Building on it, we then determine the maximal dimension of genuinely entangled subspaces that can be constructed within the stabilizer subspaces and provide an exemplary construction of such maximally-dimensional subspaces for any number of qubits. Third, we construct Bell inequalities that are maximally violated by any entangled state from those subspaces and thus also any mixed states supported on them, and we show these inequalities to be useful for self-testing. Interestingly, our Bell inequalities allow for identification of higher-dimensional face structures in the boundaries of the sets of quantum correlations in the simplest multipartite Bell scenarios in which every observer performs two dichotomic measurements.
Device-independent self-testing refers to the certification of quantum states based entirely on the correlations exhibited by measurements on separate subsystems. The fact that such a certification is possible at all is remarkable in its own right, and is intimately connected to the violation Bell’s inequalities by entangled quantum systems. In the bipartite case, it is known that, for every pure entangled bipartite state, there exists a device-independent self-testing protocol. Despite the growing interest in self-testing, an analogous universal result in the multipartite setting has remained elusive. In this work, we prove such a universal result for qubits: for every pure n-qubit entangled state, we give an explicit Bell-scenario correlations that self-tests that state, up to local isometries and, where relevant, complex conjugation. The authors prove that any pure entangled state of multiple quantum bits (qubits) can be uniquely identified using only measurement statistics, without trusting the devices, resolving a long-standing open problem in quantum certification.
Bell nonlocality provides a robust scalable route to the efficient certification of quantum states. Here, we introduce a general framework for constructing Bell inequalities tailored to the Zd toric code for odd prime local dimensions. Selecting a suitable subset of stabilizer operators and mapping them to generalized measurement observables, we compute multipartite Bell expressions whose quantum maxima admit a sum-of-squares decomposition. We show that these inequalities are maximally violated by all states in the ground-state manifold of the Zd toric code, and determine their classical (local) bounds through a combination of combinatorial tiling arguments and explicit optimization. As a concrete application, we analyze the case of d=3 and demonstrate that the maximal violation self-tests the full qutrit toric-code subspace, up to local isometries and complex conjugation. This constitutes, to our knowledge, the first-ever example of self-testing a qutrit subspace. Extending these constructions, we further present schemes to enhance the ratio of classical--quantum bounds and thus improve robustness to experimental imperfections. Our results establish a pathway toward device-independent certification of highly entangled topological quantum matter and provide new tools for validating qudit states in error-correcting codes and quantum simulation platforms.
Abstract Quantum entanglement is the key resource for quantum information processing. Device-independent certification of entangled states is a long standing open question, which arouses the concept of self-testing. The central aim of self-testing is to certify the state and measurements of quantum systems without any knowledge of their inner workings, even when the used devices cannot be trusted. Specifically, utilizing Bell’s theorem, one can infer the appearance of certain entangled state when the maximum violation is observed, e.g., to self-test singlet state using CHSH inequality. In this work, by constructing a versatile entanglement source, we experimentally demonstrate a generalized self-testing proposal for various bipartite entangled states up to four dimensions. We show that the high-quality generated states can approach the maximum violations of the utilized Bell inequalities, and thus, their Schmidt coefficients can be precisely inferred by self-testing them into respective target states with near-unity fidelities. Our results indicate the superior completeness and robustness of this method and promote self-testing as a practical tool for developing quantum techniques.