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arXiv:2407.08783 · Physical Review A

Characterizing translation-invariant Bell inequalities using tropical algebra and graph polytopes

Mengyao Hu, Eloïc Vallée, Tim Seynnaeve, Patrick Emonts, Fatemeh Mohammadi, Jordi Tura

Published Jan 13, 2026• 1 citation
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Abstract

Nonlocality is one of the key features of quantum physics, which is revealed through the violation of a Bell inequality. In large multipartite systems, nonlocality characterization quickly becomes a challenging task. A common practice is to make use of symmetries, low-order correlators, or exploiting local geometries, to restrict the class of inequalities. In this paper, we characterize translation-invariant (TI) Bell inequalities with finite-range correlators in one-dimensional geometries. We introduce a novel methodology based on tropical algebra tensor networks and highlight its connection to graph theory. Surprisingly, we find that the TI Bell polytope has a number of extremal points that can be uniformly upper-bounded with respect to the system size. We give an efficient method to list all vertices of the polytope for a particular system size, and characterize the tightness of a given TI Bell inequality. The connections highlighted in our work allow us to re-interpret concepts developed in the fields of tropical algebra and graph theory in the context of Bell nonlocality, and vice-versa. This work extends a parallel article [M. Hu \textit{et al.}, arXiv: 2208.02798 (2022)] on the same subject.

DOI
10.1103/mgm4-dz2x

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Nonlocality is one of the key features of quantum physics, which is revealed through the violation of a Bell inequality. In large multipartite systems, nonlocality characterization quickly becomes a challenging task. A common practice is to make use of symmetries, low-order correlators, or exploiting local geometries, to restrict the class of inequalities. In this paper, we characterize translation-invariant (TI) Bell inequalities with finite-range correlators in one-dimensional geometries. We introduce a novel methodology based on tropical algebra tensor networks and highlight its connection to graph theory. Surprisingly, we find that the TI Bell polytope has a number of extremal points that can be uniformly upper-bounded with respect to the system size. We give an efficient method to list all vertices of the polytope for a particular system size, and characterize the tightness of a given TI Bell inequality. The connections highlighted in our work allow us to re-interpret concepts developed in the fields of tropical algebra and graph theory in the context of Bell nonlocality, and vice-versa. This work extends a parallel article [M. Hu \textit{et al.}, arXiv: 2208.02798 (2022)] on the same subject.
Quantum computers promise computational capabilities beyond the reach of efficient classical methods, raising a central question: how can one rigorously certify nonclassical behavior in large-scale quantum devices under minimal assumptions? Bell nonlocality, the strongest and most device-independent form of quantum correlation, provides a natural framework to address this question. This thesis develops mathematical and experimental tools to detect and characterize Bell nonlocality in many-body quantum systems, with a focus on scalable Bell-inequality constructions, and the use of Bell operators as practical benchmarks for quantum processors. We first introduce a tropical tensor network framework that recasts the optimization of classical bounds for multipartite Bell inequalities as a tensor contraction in tropical algebra, enabling the characterization of broad inequality families and an extension to the thermodynamic limit. Building on this, we develop a systematic theory of translation-invariant Bell inequalities in one dimension. We then study two-dimensional spin models on the square lattice, quantifying how open, periodic, and topologically nontrivial boundary conditions modify the strength of certifiable Bell violations. On the experimental side, we demonstrate certified multipartite Bell-operator correlations on a programmable superconducting processor, including a 73-qubit honeycomb model, by mapping Bell inequalities onto many-body Hamiltonians. We further introduce a bidirectional optimization framework that co-designs Bell inequalities and Hamiltonians for a given device, yielding stronger and more noise-resilient certification.
Nonlocality shapes quantum correlations, revealed through the violation of Bell inequalities. The intersection of all valid Bell inequalities is the so-called local polytope. In multipartite systems, characterizing the local polytope quickly becomes an intractable task as the system size increases. Optimizing Bell inequalities to maximize the ratio between their quantum value and classical bound is key to understanding multipartite nonlocality. We propose a gradient-based method for this optimization. Numerical results indicate that local maxima of this ratio typically correspond to facet Bell inequalities of the local polytope. This enables an iterative search for tight and robust Bell inequalities. Applied to permutation-invariant scenarios, the method provides tight Bell inequalities with large quantum violations and facilitates experimental certification of Bell correlations without full knowledge of the local polytope. Moreover, analytical results of the maximum ratio are derived in the thermodynamic limit.
Multipartite Bell nonlocality provides a device-independent probe of many-body quantum correlations, but its characterization is limited by the rapid growth of the underlying classical and quantum optimization problems. We develop a scalable method for constructing and certifying permutationally invariant Bell inequalities using only one- and two-body correlators. The construction gives families of inequalities with robust quantum violations for general mmm measurements as the number of parties NNN becomes large. To improve robustness against noise, we optimize the ratio of the quantum value to the classical bound for these families in the large-NNN limit. We then certify the resulting quantum violation using semidefinite programming. For the broad class of Bell inequalities studied here, the infinite-NNN ratios take simple rational values for finite mmm and converge to coth⁡(1)\coth(1)coth(1) as m→∞m\to\inftym→∞. The optimized inequalities efficiently detect many-body Bell nonlocality with collective measurements, with more measurement settings leading to stronger violations.
We show that finding the classical bound of broad families of Bell inequalities can be naturally framed as the contraction of an associated tensor network, but in tropical algebra, where the sum is replaced by the minimum and the product is replaced by the arithmetic addition. We illustrate our method with paradigmatic examples both in the multipartite scenario and the bipartite scenario with multiple outcomes. We showcase how the method extends into the thermodynamic limit for some translationally invariant systems and establish a connection between the notions of tropical eigenvalue and the classical bound per particle as a fixed point of a tropical renormalization procedure.
In this work, we study a particular class of Bell inequalities involving only direct equality-comparisons of outcomes. In the bipartite case, the scenario can be interpreted as a natural generalization of full-correlator in- equalities (XOR games) beyond binary outputs. We define the sub-polytope of the local polytope corresponding to this scenario and solve it for several bipartite and multipartite scenarios by leveraging some structural prop- erties. In doing so, we obtain thousands of new tight inequalities, many of which are also facets of the standard local polytope. We also define unanimous Bell inequalities, a particular case of the previous class applied to the multipartite setting in which only full-equality events (all outcomes equal) are considered. We show that such inequalities can always be written as deterministic nonlocal games, and we give a simple multipartite unanimous family and prove its local bound. We show that most of these inequalities admit quantum violations, and we also display aspects of their importance for nonlocality. For instance, we identify examples where such inequalities can act as dimension witnesses, outcome witnesses, witnesses of genuine multipartite nonlocality, as well as being relevant to CHSH. These results show that these simple and elegant inequalities by themselves provide a powerful tool for discovering new Bell inequalities and device-independent witnesses.
Bell nonlocality is the resource that enables device-independent quantum information processing tasks. It is revealed through the violation of so-called Bell inequalities, indicating that the observed correlations cannot be reproduced by any local hidden-variable model. While well explored in few-body settings, the question of which Bell inequalities are best suited for a given task remains quite open in the many-body scenario. One natural approach is to assign Bell inequalities to physical Hamiltonians, mapping their interaction graph to two-body, nearest-neighbor terms. Here, we investigate the effect of boundary conditions in a two-dimensional square lattice, which can induce different topologies in lattice systems. We find a relation between the induced topology and the Bell inequality's effectiveness in revealing nonlocal correlations. By using a combination of tropical algebra and tensor networks, we quantify their detection capacity for nonlocality. Our work can act as a guide to certify Bell nonlocality in many-qubit devices by choosing a suitable Hamiltonian and measuring its ground-state energy, a task that many quantum experiments are purposely built for.