Abstract The recycling of quantum correlations has attracted widespread attention both theoretically and experimentally. Previous works show that bilateral sharing of nonlocality is impossible under mild measurement strategy and 2-qubit entangled state can be used to witness entanglement arbitrary many times by sequential and independent pairs of observers. However, less is known about the bilateral sharing of EPR steering yet. Here, we aim at investigating the EPR steering sharing between sequential pairs of observers. We show that an unbounded number of sequential Alice-Bob pairs can share the EPR steering as long as the initially shared state is an entangled two-qubit pure state. The claim is also true for particular class of mixed entangled states.
Abstract The recycling of quantum correlations has attracted widespread attention both theoretically and experimentally. Previous works show that bilateral sharing of nonlocality is impossible under mild measurement strategy and 2-qubit entangled state can be used to witness entanglement arbitrary many times by sequential and independent pairs of observers. However, less is known about the bilateral sharing of EPR steering yet. Here, we aim at investigating the EPR steering sharing between sequential pairs of observers. We show that an unbounded number of sequential Alice-Bob pairs can share the EPR steering as long as the initially shared state is an entangled two-qubit pure state. The claim is also true for particular class of mixed entangled states.
Nonlocality and quantum measurement are two fundamental topics in quantum theory and their interplay attracts intensive focuses since the discovery of Bell theorem. Recently, nonlocality sharing among multiple observers with one entangled pair has been predicted and experimentally observed by generalized quantum measurement---weak measurement. However, only the one-sided sequential case, i.e., one Alice and multiple Bobs, is widely discussed and little is known about the two-sided case. Here, we theoretically and experimentally explore the nonlocality sharing in the two-sided sequential measurements case in which one entangled pair is distributed to multiple Alices and Bobs. We experimentally observed double Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering among four observers in a photonic system. In the case that all observers adopt the same measurement strength of the weak measurement, it is observed that double EPR steering can be demonstrated simultaneously. The results not only deepen our understanding of relation between sequential measurements and nonlocality but also may find important applications in many quantum information tasks, such as randomness certification.
Two spatially separated observers, Alice and Bob, share a bipartite two-qubit entangled state and perform measurements to witness entanglement. After their measurements, they pass their qubits to a subsequent pair of observers who try to perform the same task independently, and so on. Here we ask: what is the maximum number of such pairs that can perform this task successfully? It has previously been conjectured that not more than one pair of observers can detect Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt ``Bell-nonlocal'' correlations in this setup. We prove that, on the contrary, entanglement can be witnessed by arbitrarily many pairs of observers. The dissimilar nature between entanglement and Bell-nonlocal correlations is therefore uncovered in a rather radical way, when considering sequentially acting pairs of observers. We prove this statement to be true when the initial shared state is any pure entangled state, a class of Bell-nonlocal mixed states, or a class of Bell-local entangled states.
We investigate the scenario where an observer, Alice, shares a two-qubit state with an arbitrary number of observers, Bobs, via sequentially and independently recycling the qubit in possession of the first Bob. It is known that there exist entangled states which can be used to have an arbitrarily long sequence of Bobs who can violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) Bell inequality with the single Alice. We show that there exist entangled states that do not violate the Bell inequality and whose entanglement can be detected by an arbitrary number of Bobs by suitably choosing the entanglement witness operator and the unsharp measurement settings by the Bobs. This proves that the set of states that can be used to witness entanglement sequentially is larger than those that can witness sequential violation of local realism. There exist, therefore, two-party quantum correlations that are Bell ``classical'', but whose entanglement ``nonclassicality'' can be witnessed sequentially and independently by an arbitrarily large number of observers at one end of the shared state with the single observer at the other end.
The problem of sharing quantum correlations is an interesting problem in the study of quantum information theory. Silva et al. proposed the study of sharing quantum nonlocality at first. They studied the fundamental limits on nonlocality, asking whether a single pair of entangled qubits could generate a long sequence of nonlocal correlations. At the same time, the sequential scenario was also introduced first, in which Alice and Bob each have half of a pair of entangled qubit states. The first Bob measures his half and then passes his part to a second Bob who measures again and so on. Obviously, even partial preservation of entanglement in a shared state in spite of a few sequences of local operations performed by the sharing parties can be important for information processing schemes in which entanglement is utilized as a resource. Thus, the problem of sharing quantum entanglement has also been extensively investigated. Recently, Srivastava et al. proved that there exist a class of T-states whose entanglement can be shared by arbitrarily many independent observers in [ Phys. Rev. A 2022 105 062413 ]. Here, we want to find whether there are other entangled states that can be shared entanglement arbitrarily many times. In this paper, we consider the problem of sharing quantum entanglement when the initial shared state is a two-qubit entangled Werner state. The goal is to maximize the number of Bobs that can share entanglement with a single Alice. By suitably choosing the entanglement witness operator and the unsharp measurement settings by the Bobs, we prove that there exist two-qubit entangled initial shared Werner states whose entanglement can be detected by arbitrarily many sequential observers Bobs with a single Alice. Then, we also consider the special case of the Werner state, that is, the maximally entangled state as the initial shared state. In this case, its entanglement can also be witnessed arbitrarily many times, and the number of Bobs increases with the decrease of parameter.
We investigate sharing of bipartite entanglement in a scenario where half of an entangled pair is possessed and projectively measured by one observer, called Alice, while the other half is subjected to measurements performed sequentially, independently, and unsharply, by multiple observers, called Bobs. We find that there is a limit on the number of observers in this entanglement distribution scenario. In particular, for a two-qubit maximally entangled initial shared state, no more than 12 Bobs can detect entanglement with a single Alice for arbitrary, possibly unequal, sharpness parameters of the measurements by the Bobs. The number of Bobs remains unaltered for a finite range of near-maximal pure initial entanglement, a feature that also occurs in the case of equal sharpness parameters at the Bobs. Furthermore, we show that for nonmaximally entangled shared pure states, the number of Bobs decreases with the amount of initial entanglement, providing a coarse-grained but operational measure of entanglement.
Abstract Quantum steering, a type of quantum correlation with unique asymmetry, has important applications in asymmetric quantum information tasks. We consider a new quantum steering scenario in which one half of a two-qubit Werner state is sequentially measured by multiple Alices and the other half by multiple Bobs. We find that the maximum number of Alices who can share steering with a single Bob increases from 2 to 5 when the number of measurement settings N increases from 2 to 16. Furthermore, we find a counterintuitive phenomenon that for a fixed N, at most 2 Alices can share steering with 2 Bobs, while 4 or more Alices are allowed to share steering with a single Bob. We further analyze the robustness of the steering sharing by calculating the required purity of the initial Werner state, the lower bound of which varies from 0.503(1) to 0.979(5). Finally, we show that our both-sides sequential steering sharing scheme can be applied to control the steering ability, even the steering direction, if an initial asymmetric state or asymmetric measurement is adopted. Our work gives insights into the diversity of steering sharing and can be extended to study the problems such as genuine multipartite quantum steering when the sequential unsharp measurement is applied.