Bell nonlocality is widely viewed as a signature of intrinsic randomness, effectively playing the role of a 'dice' at the heart of many device-independent cryptographic protocols. We show that this connection has a fundamental limitation: there exist Bell inequalities that are maximally violated by quantum correlations yet certify no randomness for any fixed input pair. We develop a systematic construction based on symmetric deterministic extensions of nonlocal games, and use it to obtain explicit examples of such inequalities. We also construct maximally nonlocal quantum correlations that, for every input pair, admit a convex decomposition into strategies with predetermined outputs for those inputs. Our results reveal a strong form of determinism compatible with quantum nonlocality and delineate the limits of device-independent randomness certification.
Bell nonlocality is widely viewed as a signature of intrinsic randomness, effectively playing the role of a 'dice' at the heart of many device-independent cryptographic protocols. We show that this connection has a fundamental limitation: there exist Bell inequalities that are maximally violated by quantum correlations yet certify no randomness for any fixed input pair. We develop a systematic construction based on symmetric deterministic extensions of nonlocal games, and use it to obtain explicit examples of such inequalities. We also construct maximally nonlocal quantum correlations that, for every input pair, admit a convex decomposition into strategies with predetermined outputs for those inputs. Our results reveal a strong form of determinism compatible with quantum nonlocality and delineate the limits of device-independent randomness certification.
Recently it has been found that there exist maximally nonlocal quantum correlations that fail to certify randomness for any fixed input pair, rendering them useless for device-independent spot-checking randomness expansion schemes. Here we show that conversely, in DI randomness amplification protocols where all input pairs are used for randomness generation, any amount of quantum nonlocality is sufficient to certify randomness. This shows that no bound randomness exists in quantum nonlocality - any quantum nonlocal behavior is useful in a DI randomness generation task with appropriate modification of protocol structure. Secondly, we show that in contrast to the hitherto considered fixed-input guessing probability, the average guessing probability over all inputs is a faithful and monotonic measure of nonlocality. We use the average guessing probability to show that in contrast to findings in PRL 134, 090201, the detection efficiency threshold for randomness generation is never lower than that for nonlocality detection. Finally, we analytically compute the average guessing probability by a quantum adversary of a single player's measurement outputs in a standard CHSH Bell test, and use it to demonstrate an improvement in the generation rate in state-of-art amplification protocols.
Given a pair of isolated devices that accept random binary inputs and return binary outputs, a user can deduce from the observed data alone if the underlying mechanism can be explained classically. Bell's theorem further states that a classical explanation can be ruled out if the devices perform certain measurements on an entangled quantum state, underpinning the security of cryptographic protocols that are device-independent (DI). For certain protocols, such as those performed in a tight space, it might be difficult to perfectly enforce the non-signaling assumption required in Bell's theorem. This prompts the question: is quantum nonlocality robust to such imperfections? We show that if a binary channel sends a noisy copy of one party's input to the other before any measurements take place, the answer is yes. We completely characterize the vertices and facets of the local polytope in this scenario, and identify Bell inequalities that certify non-signaling quantum correlations. This is possible even when a near perfect copy of the input is sent. We go on to show that the identified inequalities are more robust to depolarizing noise than the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality when certifying DI randomness in this scenario. In addition, we characterize the local polytope when both parties receive a noisy copy of each other's input and make similar conclusions, leaving many new potential Bell inequalities to be explored.
Device-independent randomness certification based on Bell nonlocality does not require any assumptions about the devices, thus provides adequate security. Great effort has been made to demonstrate that nonlocality is necessary for generating quantum randomness, but the minimal resource required has not been clarified. Here we prove and experimentally demonstrate that violating any two-input Bell inequality is both necessary and sufficient for certifying randomness, however, for the multiple-input cases, this sufficiency ceases to apply, leading to certain states exhibiting Bell nonlocality without the capability to certify randomness. We examine two typical classes of Bell inequalities with multiple input and multiple output, the facet inequalities and Salavrakos-Augusiak-Tura-Wittek-Acín-Pironio inequalities, in the high-dimensional photonic system, and observe that the violation of the latter one can always certify randomness which is not true for the former. The private randomness with a generation rate of 1.867±0.018 bits per photon pair is obtained in the scenario of Salavrakos-Augusiak-Tura-Wittek-Acín-Pironio inequalities with 3-input and 4-output. Our Letter unravels the internal connection between randomness and nonlocality, effectively enhancing the performance of tasks such as device-independent random number generation.
Bell nonlocality is the experimentally testable incompatibility between quantum correlations and explanations based on local hidden variables. Its significance now extends beyond the foundations of quantum mechanics: a Bell-inequality violation can certify entanglement, randomness, measurement incompatibility, and cryptographic security without requiring a detailed model of the devices producing the observed data. This article develops the mathematical structure of Bell experiments and explains its role in device-independent quantum information. Conditional probability distributions are classified into local, quantum, and no-signalling sets; the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality is derived, and its classical, quantum, and algebraic limits are distinguished. Tsirelson’s bound is obtained from the CHSH operator, while Popescu-Rohrlich correlations demonstrate that no-signalling alone does not identify the quantum set. The relation between entanglement and nonlocality is examined through local entangled states, hidden nonlocality, and activation. Nonlocal games, semidefinite relaxations, self-testing, certified randomness, and device-independent quantum key distribution are treated as operational consequences of Bell violation. Particular attention is given to entropy accumulation, finite-data security, loophole-free experiments, and the limitations of device independence. Bell nonlocality emerges as both a foundational separation between classical and quantum causal models and a quantitative resource for cryptographic and informational tasks.
Bell nonlocality reveals correlations that cannot be explained by classical models and plays a central role in quantum information theory. In this work, we investigate classical models of Bell nonlocality under restrictions on shared randomness. For bipartite scenarios with bounded shared randomness, the set of classical correlations becomes nonconvex. We characterize the correlations achievable without shared randomness through the simultaneous evaluation of multiple linear Bell functionals. We then extend our analysis to quantum networks by relaxing the standard assumption of source independence. In this setting, the feasibility constraints derived for the bipartite case can be used to certify source dependence, and we further construct nonlinear inequalities that distinguish classical models with correlated sources from correlations achievable in standard quantum networks. As an application, we show that these nonlinear network inequalities give rise to an entropic Bell inequality for bipartite scenarios with limited shared randomness.
The question of certifying quantum nonlocality under a relaxation of the assumptions in the Bell theorem has gained traction, with potential for device-independent applications under weak seeds and cross-talk. Recently, it was shown that quantum nonlocality can be certified even under a simultaneous arbitrary (but not full) relaxation of the assumptions of Measurement Independence (MI) and Parameter Independence (PI), using states of local dimension d=poly((1−ε)−1) for an ε∈[0,1)-relaxation. Here, we derive three results strengthening the state-of-art. Firstly, we show that states of constant local dimension d are already sufficient to certify quantum nonlocality under arbitrary MI and PI relaxation, albeit in a non-robust manner. Secondly, and as a theoretical paradigm to derive the above, we introduce the notion of \textit{measurement-dependent parameter-dependent locality} as the set of input-output behaviors under simultaneous relaxations of measurement and parameter independence. We provide a rigorous characterisation of the vertices of the polytope of joint input-output behaviors that obey a μ-relaxation of MI and ε-relaxation of PI. We highlight a relation between nonlocality certification under PI relaxation and that under detection inefficiencies by pointing out alternative extremal correlations to the Eberhard correlations that also allow to achieve detection efficiency of η=2/3 in the two-input scenario. Finally, we study the implication of the relaxed assumptions for device-independent randomness certification. We analytically derive the quantum guessing probability for one player's outcomes in the CHSH Bell test, as a function of the noise in the test as well as of a leakage of an average amount of I(X:B)<1 bits of input information per measurement round.