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arXiv:2404.12790 · Physical Review Letters

Minimal Example of Quantum Nonclassicality without Freedom of Choice

Pedro Lauand, Davide Poderini, Rafael Rabelo, Rafael Chaves

Published Aug 1, 2025• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Bell's theorem is often considered the most stringent notion of nonclassicality. The generalization of Bell's theorem to causal networks offers interesting new perspectives on the phenomenon of quantum nonclassicality and prompts us with a fundamental inquiry: what is the simplest scenario leading to the incompatibility between quantum correlations and the classical theory of causality? Here, we demonstrate that quantum nonclassicality is possible in an entanglement swapping network consisting of only three dichotomic variables, without the need for the locality assumption or external measurement choices. We also show that interventions, a central tool in the field of causal inference, significantly improve the noise robustness of this new kind of nonclassical behavior, making it feasible for experimental tests with current technology.

DOI
10.1103/3854-r395

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Bell's theorem is often considered the most stringent notion of nonclassicality. The generalization of Bell's theorem to causal networks offers interesting new perspectives on the phenomenon of quantum nonclassicality and prompts us with a fundamental inquiry: what is the simplest scenario leading to the incompatibility between quantum correlations and the classical theory of causality? Here, we demonstrate that quantum nonclassicality is possible in an entanglement swapping network consisting of only three dichotomic variables, without the need for the locality assumption or external measurement choices. We also show that interventions, a central tool in the field of causal inference, significantly improve the noise robustness of this new kind of nonclassical behavior, making it feasible for experimental tests with current technology.
Bell's theorem can be understood as establishing the incompatibility of quantum correlations with any classical causal explanation. Causal inference, however, relies not only on passive observations but also on interventions. Here we ask when the observational and interventional data collected on a given causal structure can all be reproduced by a single classical causal model, which is a particular instance of the data fusion problem in causal inference [Bareinboim and Pearl, PNAS 113, 7345 (2016)]. We show that quantum systems give rise to a new form of nonclassicality in this setting, namely: when the data tables associated with each (non)intervention paradigm admit classical explanations, but no single classical model explains the different intervention paradigms when considered jointly. We call this nonclassicality in the synthesis of the data fusion. We assess the prevalence of such fusion by partitioning all marginalized causal structures over three observed variables into exactly two categories: those which can and those which cannot exhibit such nonclassicality. For all those that can, we present explicit quantum violations of the associated causal inequalities.
Quantum causal networks enable tests of nonclassicality beyond Bell nonlocality while relaxing some physically unwarranted assumptions. By relaxing the freedom-of-choice and spacelike-separation assumptions, the unrelated-confounders causal networks provide a simple and robust route to certify quantum nonclassicality. Here, we implement the minimal three-node unrelated-confounders network in an optical experiment using two independent polarization-entangled photon sources and an intervention at the central node, experimentally achieved with a high-fidelity entangling measurement. We employ a causal data-fusion protocol that combines observational and interventional data to significantly improve the protocol's noise tolerance, and observe a violation of the corresponding hybrid causal inequality by more than three standard deviations. Our results provide deeper insights into quantum nonlocality in networks and highlight the UC network as a compact, experimentally accessible platform for device-independent quantum protocols that do not require actively chosen measurement settings.
Seen from the modern lens of causal inference, Bell's theorem is nothing other than the proof that a specific classical causal model cannot explain quantum correlations.It is thus natural to move beyond Bell's paradigmatic scenario and consider different causal structures.For the specific case of three observable variables, it is known that there are three nontrivial causal networks.Two of those are known to give rise to quantum nonclassicality: the instrumental and the triangle scenarios.Here we analyze the third and remaining one, which we name the Evans scenario, akin to the causal structure underlying the entanglement-swapping experiment.We prove a number of results about this elusive scenario and introduce new and efficient computational tools for its analysis that can also be adapted to deal with more general causal structures.We do not solve its main open problem-whether quantum nonclassical correlations can arise from it-but give a significant step in this direction by proving that postquantum correlations, analogous to the paradigmatic Popescu-Rohrlich box, do violate the constraints imposed by a classical description of the Evans causal structure.
Since Bell's theorem, it is known that local realism fails to explain quantum phenomena. Bell inequality violations manifestly show the incompatibility of quantum theory with classical notions of cause and effect. As recently found, however, the instrumental scenario-a pivotal tool in causal inference-allows for nonclassicality signatures going beyond this paradigm. If we are not limited to observational data and can intervene in our setup, then we can witness quantum violations of classical bounds on the causal influence among the involved variables even when no Bell-like violation is possible. That is, through interventions, the quantum behavior of a system that would seem classical can be demonstrated. Using a photonic setup-faithfully implementing the instrumental causal structure and switching between observation and intervention run by run-we experimentally witness such a nonclassicality. We also test quantum bounds for the causal influence, showing that they provide a reliable tool for quantum causal modeling.
Bell's theorem is typically understood as the proof that quantum theory is incompatible with localhidden-variable models.More generally, we can see the violation of a Bell inequality as witnessing the impossibility of explaining quantum correlations with classical causal models.The violation of a Bell inequality, however, does not exclude classical models where some level of measurement dependence is allowed, that is, the choice made by observers can be correlated with the source generating the systems to be measured.Here, we show that the level of measurement dependence can be quantitatively upper bounded if we arrange the Bell test within a network.Furthermore, we also prove that these results can be adapted in order to derive nonlinear Bell inequalities for a large class of causal networks and to identify quantumly realizable correlations that violate them.
From the modern perspective of causal inference, Bell's theorem -- a fundamental signature of quantum theory -- is a particular case where quantum correlations are incompatible with the classical theory of causality, and the generalization of Bell's theorem to quantum networks has led to several breakthrough results and novel applications. Here, we consider the problem of causal data fusion, where we piece together multiple datasets collected under heterogeneous conditions. In particular, we show quantum experiments can generate observational and interventional data with a non-classical signature when pieced together that cannot be reproduced classically. We prove this quantum non-classicality emerges from the fusion of the datasets and is present in a plethora of scenarios, even where standard Bell non-classicality is impossible. Furthermore, we show that non-classicality genuine to the fusion of multiple data tables is achievable with quantum resources. Our work shows incorporating interventions -- a central tool in causal inference -- can be a powerful tool to detect non-classicality beyond the violation of a standard Bell inequality. In a companion article "Quantum Non-classicality from Causal Data Fusion", we extend our investigation considering all latent exogenous causal structures with 3 observable variables.