Graph states-one of the most representative families of multipartite entangled states-are important resources for multiparty quantum communication, quantum error correction, and quantum computation. Device-independent certification of highly entangled graph states plays a prominent role in quantum information processing tasks. Here we have experimentally demonstrated device-independent certification for multipartite graph states by adopting the robust self-testing scheme based on scalable Bell inequalities. Specifically, the prepared multi-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and linear cluster states achieve a high degree of Bell violation, which are beyond the nontrivial bounds of the robust self-testing scheme. Furthermore, our work paves the way to the device-independent certification of complex multipartite quantum states.
Graph states-one of the most representative families of multipartite entangled states-are important resources for multiparty quantum communication, quantum error correction, and quantum computation. Device-independent certification of highly entangled graph states plays a prominent role in quantum information processing tasks. Here we have experimentally demonstrated device-independent certification for multipartite graph states by adopting the robust self-testing scheme based on scalable Bell inequalities. Specifically, the prepared multi-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states and linear cluster states achieve a high degree of Bell violation, which are beyond the nontrivial bounds of the robust self-testing scheme. Furthermore, our work paves the way to the device-independent certification of complex multipartite quantum states.
Practical robust self-testing of multipartite entanglement has so far been restricted to small-scale systems due to error bounds that degrade severely with system size. In this work, we establish multipartite self-testing with robustness independent of the size of the quantum network. We derive a fully analytic, device-independent self-testing bound for n-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. The bound scales linearly with the observed violation error and lies universally within a constant factor of two from a theoretical upper bound. Furthermore, the operator-inequality framework reduces the verification of the conjectured optimal bound to a highly efficient numerical check, which we perform up to n=100. Consequently, GHZ entanglement can be certified under a fixed noise level in arbitrarily large systems, enabling scalable device-independent verification.
Quantum self-testing is a device-independent way to certify quantum states and measurements using only the input-output statistics, with minimal assumptions about the quantum devices. Because of the high demand on tolerable noise, however, experimental self-testing was limited to two-photon systems. Here, we demonstrate the first robust self-testing for multiphoton genuinely entangled quantum states. We prepare two examples of four-photon graph states, the Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states with a fidelity of 0.957(2) and the linear cluster states with a fidelity of 0.945(2). Based on the observed input-output statistics, we certify the genuine four-photon entanglement and further estimate their qualities with respect to realistic noise in a device-independent manner.
Device-independent certification of multipartite entangled states plays a central role
in a wide range of practical applications, including quantum networks, conference key agreement, and verifiable distributed quantum computation. A particularly important class of multipartite entangled states is the class of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Many Bell operators have been proposed to self-test GHZ states. However, in practical scenarios, due to imperfections and the finite collection of statistics, the observed statistics do not satisfy the ideal self-testing relations. Hence, it becomes essential to investigate and compare the robustness of the different self-testing protocols. In this work, we investigate the robustness of self-testing schemes constructed from Bell operators due to Svetlichny and Mermin--Ardehali--Belinskii--Klyshko (MABK), using the analytic operator-inequality framework developed by Kaniewski [\href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.070402}{Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 070402 (2016)}]. We derive lower bounds on the extractable fidelity as a function of the observed value of these Bell operators. Although these protocols self-test the same underlying state, they exhibit markedly different levels of robustness. By comparing the resulting fidelity bounds, we demonstrate that the self-testing scheme based on the Svetlichny's Bell operator is the more robust among the two. Our results thus identify the Svetlichny operator based self-testing protocol as the most favorable candidate for device-independent certification of GHZ states in realistic, noisy experimental scenarios.
Device-independent certification schemes have gained a lot of interest lately, not only for their applications in quantum information tasks, but also their implications towards foundations of quantum theory. The strongest form of device-independent certification, known as self-testing, often requires for a Bell inequality to be maximally violated by specific quantum states and measurements. In this work, using the techniques developed recently [S. Sarkar et al., npj Quantum Inf. 7, 151 (2021)], we provide a self-testing scheme for the multipartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states of arbitrary local dimension that does not rely on self-testing results for qubit states and that exploits the minimal number of two measurements per party. This makes our results interesting as far as practical implementation of device-independent certification methods is concerned. Our self-testing statement relies on maximal violation of a Bell inequality proposed recently [R. Augusiak et al., New J. Phys. 21, 113001 (2019)].
Self-testing is an examination for characterizing unknown quantum devices based on correlations of observed statistics in a black-box scenario. With development of large-scale quantum networks, the requirement for self-testing multipartite entangled measurements has become very demanding. We develop here a general procedure for self-testing arbitrary generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-state (GHZ-state) measurements which applies to any number of parties. Moreover, it turns out that the existing result for the three-qubit GHZ-state measurement is recovered as a special case. Our results will motivate operational certification of quantum devices related to device-independent quantum information tasks for various scenarios in complicated quantum networks.
Bell state measurements, of which the eigenvectors are in an entangled form, are crucial resources in the construction of quantum networks. Therefore, device-independent certification of a Bell state measurement has significance in the quantum information process because it satisfies the exact demand on security. In this study, we implement a proof-of-concept experiment to certify a Bell state measurement device independently in an entanglement swapping process, namely, self-testing. Instead of preparing a tensor product of two singlets with four photons, multiplex encoding in polarization and spatial modes is utilized to produce two pairs of entangled qubits. As a result, we implement a full Bell state measurement and achieve a high degree of Bell violation on the remaining two qubits, which are required for nontrivial self-testing of a Bell state measurement. Furthermore, our results combine the correlations before and after the swapping; thus, the quality of the performed Bell state measurement can be precisely inferred.