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arXiv:2508.02377 · Scientific Reports

Prepare-and-measure and entanglement simulation beyond qubits

Mani Zartab, Giulio Gasbarri, Gael Sentís, R. Muñoz-Tapia

Published May 9, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

For two non-communicating parties, quantum theory can give rise to probability distributions of outcomes that no local classical model can reproduce without communication. However, in the case of two-dimensional systems ([Formula: see text]), it is known that allowing a finite amount of classical communication in addition to shared classical resources makes it possible to simulate these quantum correlations. Whether such a simulation remains possible in higher dimensions is still an open question. In this work, we identify the key features of the exact classical protocol in [Formula: see text], and use them to construct robust approximate protocols in higher dimensions. We assess their performance through a randomized numerical study based on the Total Variation Distance. Our approach exactly reproduces the quantum probability distributions for [Formula: see text], and performs very well compared to existing protocols for higher dimensions, being the most robust protocol in all cases studied. These results offer new insights into the analytical structure of classical protocols in higher dimensions.

DOI
10.1038/s41598-026-51465-3

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For two non-communicating parties, quantum theory can give rise to probability distributions of outcomes that no local classical model can reproduce without communication. However, in the case of two-dimensional systems ([Formula: see text]), it is known that allowing a finite amount of classical communication in addition to shared classical resources makes it possible to simulate these quantum correlations. Whether such a simulation remains possible in higher dimensions is still an open question. In this work, we identify the key features of the exact classical protocol in [Formula: see text], and use them to construct robust approximate protocols in higher dimensions. We assess their performance through a randomized numerical study based on the Total Variation Distance. Our approach exactly reproduces the quantum probability distributions for [Formula: see text], and performs very well compared to existing protocols for higher dimensions, being the most robust protocol in all cases studied. These results offer new insights into the analytical structure of classical protocols in higher dimensions.
A quantum system of any fixed dimension can be prepared in a continuum of states, yet it cannot be used to transmit an unlimited amount of classical information. Similarly, the correlations observed between measurement outcomes on separate parts of a shared quantum system can be stronger than classical correlations, but they cannot transmit information. These fundamental limitations suggest that the statistics observed from quantum communication and quantum correlations may admit a simulation using a finite amount of classical communication. This expectation is confirmed in the smallest nontrivial quantum dimension, with two classical bits being necessary and sufficient to exactly simulate qubit communication and all correlations between qubits. Despite significant efforts during the previous decades, this remained the only solved case. Here we resolve both problems for every quantum dimension. The solution reveals an unexpected qualitative transition starting at dimension four: no finite amount of classical communication can exactly simulate ququart communication nor all quantum correlations of two entangled ququarts, even with unlimited shared randomness. One might have expected this transition, if it existed, to appear already for qutrits. Instead, we construct an explicit protocol that exactly simulates qutrit communication using 357357357 classical bits, and consequently, all correlations of two entangled qutrits.
A long-standing open question is to characterize the classical communication cost of simulating the correlations arising from measurements on finite-dimensional quantum systems. We consider this question in the prepare-and-measure scenario. First we construct a classical simulation model involving a finite average number of bits of one-way communication that simulates exactly the correlations arising from arbitrary ddd-dimensional quantum states and arbitrary measurements. Second, we show that no classical simulation protocol involving a finite average message dimension can exist for d≥4d\geq 4d≥4, hence strengthening a recent result of de Gois, Santos and Vieira. Our first result relies on a more general simulation theorem which can be applied to certain continuous variable (i.e. infinite-dimensional) quantum systems, and even beyond quantum theory, e.g. to generalized probabilistic theories. In particular, we show that multimode Gaussian states of bounded average energy and general Gaussian measurements admit an exact classical simulation with a finite expected number of bits. Overall, our results show that the classical simulation cost of quantum communication is essentially as high as it could be.
Certifying quantum behavior from classically accessible data is essential for secure communication and scalable quantum technologies. While powerful certification methods such as Bell nonlocality and quantum steering exist, their implementation typically requires entanglement or additional assumptions, and experimental demonstrations mainly focus on low-dimensional systems. In minimal prepare-and-measure scenarios, where a sender encodes information into quantum states and a receiver performs a single measurement, robust certification becomes particularly challenging, especially in the presence of noise and in higher-dimensional Hilbert spaces. Here, we propose, design, and experimentally implement a protocol that certifies quantumness between two distant parties without the need for preshared resources or measurement incompatibility. The experiments are carried out using the orbital angular momentum degrees of freedom of single photons, chosen for providing increased dimensionality that is scalable. We demonstrate the robustness of the protocol through rank-stability analysis of the observed correlations, which enables the certification of non-classicality even in the presence of noise. Our results provide a practical route to validate high-dimensional quantum communication systems and open new possibilities for secure and dimension-efficient quantum information processing.
A longstanding question in Bell nonlocality is whether finite-alphabet nonsignalling resources can reproduce the continuum of measurement correlations of partially entangled qubits. Here we resolve this problem by showing that every fixed pure two-qubit state admits an exact simulation of all local projective-measurement statistics using shared randomness and finitely many Popescu-Rohrlich (PR) boxes, without communication or postselection. The boxes operate in parallel, with a worst-case bound independent of the measurement settings: at most 128cot⁡4θ128\cot^4θ128cot4θ calls for the Schmidt state cos⁡θ∣00⟩+sin⁡θ∣11⟩\cosθ|00\rangle+\sinθ|11\ranglecosθ∣00⟩+sinθ∣11⟩, 0<θ<π/40<θ<π/40<θ<π/4. The key is an exact finite-selection method that reduces input-dependent continuous sampling to a choice from a fixed-length shared random list, implemented through a finite PR-box network. The construction extends to arbitrary mixed two-qubit states and local binary-outcome POVMs. This reveals a fundamental separation between the continuity of quantum measurement correlations and the alphabet size of the resources needed to simulate them, shedding light on the resource-theoretic structure of Bell nonlocality.
We investigate the correlations that can arise between Alice and Bob in prepare-and-measure communication scenarios where the source (Alice) and the measurement device (Bob) can share prior entanglement.The paradigmatic example of such a scenario is the quantum dense-coding protocol, where the communication capacity of a qudit can be doubled if a two-qudit entangled state is shared between Alice and Bob.We provide examples of correlations that actually require more general protocols based on higher-dimensional entangled states.This motivates us to investigate the set of correlations that can be obtained from communicating either a classical or a quantum d-dimensional system in the presence of an unlimited amount of entanglement.We show how such correlations can be characterized by a hierarchy of semidefinite programming relaxations by reducing the problem to a noncommutative polynomial optimization problem.We also introduce an alternative relaxation hierarchy based on the notion of informationally restricted quantum correlations, which, though it represents a strict (nonconverging) relaxation scheme, is less computationally demanding.As an application, we introduce device-independent tests of the dimension of classical and quantum systems that, in contrast to previous results, do not make the implicit assumption that Alice and Bob share no entanglement.We also establish several relations between communication with and without entanglement as resources for creating correlations.
We consider two-stage hybrid protocols that combine quantum resources and classical resources to generate classical correlations shared by two separated players. Our motivation is twofold. First, in the near future, the scale of quantum information processing is quite limited, and when quantum resource available is not sufficient for certain tasks, a possible way to strengthen the capability of quantum schemes is introducing extra classical resources. We analyze the mathematical structures of these hybrid protocols, and characterize the relation between the amount of quantum resources and classical resources needed. Second, a fundamental open problem in communication complexity theory is to describe the advantage of sharing prior quantum entanglement over sharing prior randomness, which is still widely open. It turns out that our quantum and classical hybrid protocols provide new insight into this important problem.