Locally classical behavior is often interpreted as evidence that a global classical description should exist. In particular, when individual processes admit classical (measure-and-prepare) realizations, it is natural to expect at least one compatible joint implementation that remains classical. We show that this intuition fails in a simple broadcast setting with one input system and two outputs. Specifically, we construct pairs of compatible channels that are entanglement-breaking individually and thus admit classical descriptions, yet every joint broadcast realization is necessarily Bell-nonlocal between the outputs, even for a maximally mixed input. This establishes a form of compatibility-induced activation of nonlocality: Bell nonlocality arises not from entanglement in the inputs or marginal channels, but solely from the requirement that these marginals admit a common global implementation. In this sense, compatibility is not merely a consistency condition on local descriptions, but a mechanism that can enforce nonclassical correlations at the global level.
Locally classical behavior is often interpreted as evidence that a global classical description should exist. In particular, when individual processes admit classical (measure-and-prepare) realizations, it is natural to expect at least one compatible joint implementation that remains classical. We show that this intuition fails in a simple broadcast setting with one input system and two outputs. Specifically, we construct pairs of compatible channels that are entanglement-breaking individually and thus admit classical descriptions, yet every joint broadcast realization is necessarily Bell-nonlocal between the outputs, even for a maximally mixed input. This establishes a form of compatibility-induced activation of nonlocality: Bell nonlocality arises not from entanglement in the inputs or marginal channels, but solely from the requirement that these marginals admit a common global implementation. In this sense, compatibility is not merely a consistency condition on local descriptions, but a mechanism that can enforce nonclassical correlations at the global level.
Bell nonlocality refers to correlations between two distant, entangled particles that challenge classical notions of local causality. Beyond its foundational significance, nonlocality is crucial for device-independent technologies like quantum key distribution and randomness generation. Nonlocality quickly deteriorates in the presence of noise, and restoring nonlocal correlations requires additional resources. These often come in the form of many instances of the input state and joint measurements, incurring a significant resource overhead. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that single copies of Bell-local states, incapable of violating any standard Bell inequality, can give rise to nonlocality after being embedded into a quantum network of multiple parties. We subject the initial entangled state to a quantum channel that broadcasts part of the state to two independent receivers and certify the nonlocality in the resulting network by violating a tailored Bell-like inequality. We obtain these results without making any assumptions about the prepared states, the quantum channel, or the validity of quantum theory. Our findings have fundamental implications for nonlocality and enable the practical use of nonlocal correlations in real-world applications, even in scenarios dominated by noise.
Bell nonlocality describes a manifestation of quantum mechanics that cannot be explained by any local hidden variable model. Its origin lies in the nature of quantum entanglement, although understanding the precise relationship between nonlocality and entanglement has been a notorious open problem. In this paper, we develop a dynamical framework in which quantum Bell nonlocality emerges as a special form of entanglement and both are unified as resources under local operations and classical communication (LOCC). Our framework is built on the notion of classical and quantum processes, which are defined as channels that map elements between specific intervals in space and time. Entanglement is identified as a process that cannot be generated by LOCC while Bell nonlocality is the subset of these processes that have an instantaneous input-to-output delay time. LOCC preprocessing is a natural set of free operations in this theory, thereby providing previous nonlocality activation results a clear resource-theoretic foundation. We provide a systematic method to quantify the Bell nonlocality of a bipartite quantum channel. It is shown that both the relative entropy and the max relative entropy of nonlocality are nonadditive for a family of bipartite classical channels. This family includes the channel obtained when using the singlet state to maximally violate the CHSH inequality. We also find that the regularized relative entropy of Bell nonlocality provides an upper bound on the asymptotic rate of converting (i.e., simulating) many copies of one classical instantaneous resource to another.
Activation of Bell nonlocality refers to the phenomenon that some entangled mixed states that admit a local hidden variable model in the standard Bell scenario nevertheless reveal their nonlocal nature in more exotic measurement scenarios. We present such a scenario that involves broadcasting the local subsystems of a single-copy of a bipartite quantum state to multiple parties, and use the scenario to study the nonlocal properties of the two-qubit isotropic state: ρα=α|Φ+⟩⟨Φ+|+(1−α)14. We present two main results, considering that Nature allows for (i) the most general no-signalling correlations, and (ii) the most general quantum correlations at the level of any hidden variable theory. We show that the state does not admit a local hidden variable description for α>0.559 and α>12 , in cases (i) and (ii) respectively, which in both cases provides a device-independent certification of the entanglement of the state. These bounds are significantly lower than the previously best-known bound of 0.697 for both Bell nonlocality and device-independent entanglement certification using a single copy of the state. Our results show that strong examples of non-classicality are possible with a small number of resources.
Entanglement and Bell nonlocality are known to be inequivalent: there exist entangled states that admit a local hidden-variable model for all local measurements. Here we show that this gap disappears in a minimal broadcast extension of the Bell scenario. Assuming only the validity of quantum theory, we prove that for every entangled state ρAB there exist local broadcasting maps and local measurements such that the resulting four--partite correlations cannot be reproduced by any broadcast network whose source is separable across the A∣B cut. Thus, all entangled states are broadcast nonlocal in quantum theory. In addition, we show that all (also mixed) multipartite states can be broadcast-self-tested, according to a natural operational definition.
Violations of Bell inequalities are commonly interpreted as evidence for either nonlocal dynamics or the failure of classical realism. In this work, we show that Bell-type correlations can arise without invoking superluminal influences, retrocausality, or local hidden variables, provided that the mapping between underlying configurations and observable outcomes is non-injective. We study a class of effective models in which multiple underlying states correspond to the same observable description. Such non-injective projections generically induce non-factorizable joint probability structures at the level of observables, even when the underlying description itself is fully local and deterministic. As a result, the statistical assumptions required to derive Bell inequalities are violated at the effective level, while locality is preserved at the underlying level. Within this framework, quantum correlations emerge as structural features of projected descriptions rather than as signatures of nonlocal causation. We clarify the precise assumption of Bell’s theorem that fails in this setting and show how classical behavior is recovered in regimes where the effective projection becomes approximately injective, suppressing nonlocal correlations through decoherence and environmental coarse-graining. Our results suggest that Bell inequality violations need not reflect a fundamental nonlocality of nature, but may instead indicate intrinsic information loss induced by non-injective mappings between underlying configurations and observable descriptions.
Bell scenarios are multipartite scenarios that exclude any communication between parties. This constraint leads to a strict hierarchy of correlation sets in such scenarios, namely, classical, quantum, and nonsignaling. However, without any constraints on communication between the parties, they can realize arbitrary correlations by exchanging only classical systems. Here we consider a multipartite scenario where the parties can engage in at most a single round of communication, i.e., each party is allowed to receive a system once, implement any local intervention on it, and send out the resulting system once. While no global assumption about causal relations between parties is assumed in this scenario, we do make a causal assumption local to each party, i.e., the input received by it causally precedes the output it sends out. We then introduce antinomicity, a notion of nonclassicality for correlations in such scenarios, and prove the existence of a strict hierarchy of correlation sets classified by their antinomicity. Antinomicity serves as a generalization of Bell nonlocality: when all the parties discard their output systems (i.e., in a nonsignaling scenario), it is mathematically equivalent to Bell nonlocality. Like Bell nonlocality, it can be understood as an instance of fine-tuning, one that is necessary in any classical model of cyclic causation that avoids time-travel antinomies but allows antinomic correlations. Furthermore, antinomicity resolves a long-standing puzzle, i.e., the failure of causal inequality violations as device-independent witnesses of nonclassicality. Antinomicity implies causal inequality violations, but not conversely.