Quantum correlations between measurements of separated observers are crucial for applications like randomness generation and key distribution. Although device-independent security can be certified with minimal assumptions, current protocols have limited performance. Here, we exploit sequential measurements, defined with a precise temporal order, to enhance performance by reusing quantum states. We provide a geometric perspective and a general mathematical framework, analytically proving a Tsirelson-like boundary for sequential quantum correlations, which represents a trade-off in nonlocality shared by sequential users. This boundary is advantageous for secure quantum randomness generation, certifying maximum bits per state with one remote and two sequential parties, even if one sequential user shares no nonlocality. Our simple qubit protocol reaches this boundary, and numerical analysis shows improved robustness under realistic noise. A photonic implementation confirms feasibility and robustness. This study advances the understanding of sequential quantum correlations and offers insights for efficient device-independent protocols.
Quantum correlations between measurements of separated observers are crucial for applications like randomness generation and key distribution. Although device-independent security can be certified with minimal assumptions, current protocols have limited performance. Here, we exploit sequential measurements, defined with a precise temporal order, to enhance performance by reusing quantum states. We provide a geometric perspective and a general mathematical framework, analytically proving a Tsirelson-like boundary for sequential quantum correlations, which represents a trade-off in nonlocality shared by sequential users. This boundary is advantageous for secure quantum randomness generation, certifying maximum bits per state with one remote and two sequential parties, even if one sequential user shares no nonlocality. Our simple qubit protocol reaches this boundary, and numerical analysis shows improved robustness under realistic noise. A photonic implementation confirms feasibility and robustness. This study advances the understanding of sequential quantum correlations and offers insights for efficient device-independent protocols.
Device-independent quantum information is attracting significant attention, particularly for its applications in information security. This interest arises because the security of device-independent protocols relies solely on the observed outcomes of spatially separated measurements and the validity of quantum physics. Sequential scenarios, i.e., where measurements occur in a precise temporal order, have been proved to enhance performance of device-independent protocols in some specific cases by enabling the reuse of the same quantum state. In this work, we propose a systematic approach to designing sequential quantum protocols for device-independent security. Our method begins with a bipartite self-testing qubit protocol and transforms it into a sequential protocol by replacing one measurement with its non-projective counterpart and adding an additional user thereafter. We analytically prove that, with this systematic construction, the resulting ideal correlations are secure in the sense that they cannot be reproduced as a statistical mixture of other correlations, thereby enabling, for example, the device-independent certification of all the randomness present in the observed correlations. The general recipe we provide can be exploited for further development of new device-independent quantum schemes for security.
The generation of certifiable randomness is one of the most promising applications of quantum technologies. Furthermore, the intrinsic non-locality of quantum correlations allow us to certify randomness in a device-independent way, ie, we do not need to make assumptions about the devices used. Due to the work of Curchod et al. a single entangled two-qubit pure state can be used to produce arbitrary amounts of certified randomness. However, the obtaining of this randomness is experimentally challenging as it requires a large number of measurements, both projective and general. Motivated by these difficulties in the device-independent setting, we instead consider the scenario of one-sided device independence where certain devices are trusted, and others are not; a scenario motivated by asymmetric experimental set-ups such as ion-photon networks. We show how certain aspects of previous works can be adapted to this scenario and provide theoretical bounds on the amount of randomness that can be certified. Furthermore, we give a protocol for unbounded randomness certification in this scenario, and provide numerical results demonstrating the protocol in the ideal case. Finally, we numerically test the possibility of implementing this scheme on near-term quantum technologies, by considering the performance of the protocol on several physical platforms.
The generation of certifiable randomness is one of the most promising applications of quantum technologies. Furthermore, the intrinsic non-locality of quantum correlations allow us to certify randomness in a device-independent way, i.e., we do not need to make assumptions about the devices used. Due to the work of Curchod et al. a single entangled two-qubit pure state can be used to produce arbitrary amounts of certified randomness. However, the obtaining of this randomness is experimentally challenging as it requires a large number of measurements, both projective and general. Motivated by these difficulties in the device-independent setting, we instead consider the scenario of one-sided device independence where certain devices are trusted, and others are not; a scenario motivated by asymmetric experimental set-ups such as ion-photon networks. We show how certain aspects of previous works can be adapted to this scenario and provide theoretical bounds on the amount of randomness that can be certified. Furthermore, we give a protocol for unbounded randomness certification in this scenario, and provide numerical results demonstrating the protocol in the ideal case. Finally, we numerically test the possibility of implementing this scheme on near-term quantum technologies, by considering the performance of the protocol on several physical platforms.
Device-independent (DI) quantum protocols use Bell inequality violations to ensure security or certify quantum properties without assumptions on the devices’ internal workings. In this work, we study the role of rank-one qubit positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) in DI scenarios. This class includes all qubit extremal POVMs, i.e., those measurements that cannot be realized as mixtures of others, as well as part of non-extremal POVMs, recently shown to be useful in sequential quantum protocols. We demonstrate that any rank-one POVM can generate correlations in bipartite scenarios that saturate a Tsirelson inequality when two parties share an arbitrary entangled two-qubit state and perform specific self-tested measurements. For extremal POVMs, such saturation enables explicit computation of guessing probability and worst-case conditional von Neumann entropy. From the Tsirelson inequality, we establish a randomness certification method that facilitates numerical simulations and we validate it through a proof-of-concept experiment with three-outcome POVMs and tilted entangled states.
Sequential sharing of quantum nonlocality (SSQN) is crucial for device-independent tasks in quantum information processing, wherein relaying the post-measurement qubit through a local quantum channel to a subsequent observer constitutes an essential operational step. Here we present a theoretical analysis of noise robustness of sequential sharing for bipartite Bell and tripartite Mermin nonlocality under the influence of local phase-flip, bit-flip, and depolarizing quantum channels. It is proved that arbitrarily many independent observers can sequentially share the quantum nonlocality of Bell, Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger, and W states via respective noise-immune channels, whereas such unbound feature of SSQN is lost under other local noisy quantum channels. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the noise-immune channel enabling unbounded SSQN can be switched by employing our newly designed measurement strategies assisted by local unitary operations on the initial entangled states. Moreover, as illustrative examples of noise robustness, we propose two concrete schemes for sharing Bell and Mermin nonlocality with two sequential local observers on one side subject to local noisy channels. Our work establishes a practical framework for realizing the SSQN under noisy quantum channels, and reveals the connection between noise robustness and measurement strategies.
An important problem in quantum information theory is that of bounding sets of correlations that arise from making local measurements on entangled states of arbitrary dimension. Currently, the best-known method to tackle this problem is the NPA hierarchy; an infinite sequence of semidefinite programs that provides increasingly tighter outer approximations to the desired set of correlations. In this work we consider a more general scenario in which one performs sequences of local measurements on an entangled state of arbitrary dimension. We show that a simple adaptation of the original NPA hierarchy provides an analogous hierarchy for this scenario, with comparable resource requirements and convergence properties. We then use the method to tackle some problems in device-independent quantum information. First, we show how one can robustly certify over 2.3 bits of device-independent local randomness from a two-quibt state using a sequence of measurements, going beyond the theoretical maximum of two bits that can be achieved with non-sequential measurements. Finally, we show tight upper bounds to two previously defined tasks in sequential Bell test scenarios.