Abstract Robust self-testing provides a framework for certifying quantum resources under experimental imperfections. Improving robustness bounds for quantum resources such as quantum states, steering assemblages, and measurements is a constant effort that ensures relevance in the experimental realm. Despite progress in analytic self-testing methods for quantum states and measurements, extending these techniques to device-independent certification of steering assemblages has remained an open challenge, with previous work relying primarily on numerical approaches. We address this gap by developing operator inequalities for robust self-testing of quantum steering assemblages. Specifically, we consider the assemblage that achieves maximal violation of the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality and obtain explicit lower bounds on its certification fidelity. Our analytic approach yields results that significantly improve upon previous numerical bounds, representing the first analytic treatment of device-independent assemblage self-testing. This work demonstrates a new application of operator inequalities beyond quantum state certification and contributes to the foundational understanding of device-independent certification in steering scenarios, potentially guiding future theoretical and experimental developments.
Abstract Robust self-testing provides a framework for certifying quantum resources under experimental imperfections. Improving robustness bounds for quantum resources such as quantum states, steering assemblages, and measurements is a constant effort that ensures relevance in the experimental realm. Despite progress in analytic self-testing methods for quantum states and measurements, extending these techniques to device-independent certification of steering assemblages has remained an open challenge, with previous work relying primarily on numerical approaches. We address this gap by developing operator inequalities for robust self-testing of quantum steering assemblages. Specifically, we consider the assemblage that achieves maximal violation of the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt inequality and obtain explicit lower bounds on its certification fidelity. Our analytic approach yields results that significantly improve upon previous numerical bounds, representing the first analytic treatment of device-independent assemblage self-testing. This work demonstrates a new application of operator inequalities beyond quantum state certification and contributes to the foundational understanding of device-independent certification in steering scenarios, potentially guiding future theoretical and experimental developments.
Given a Bell inequality, if its maximal quantum violation can be achieved only by a single set of measurements for each party or a single quantum state, up to local unitaries, one refers to such a phenomenon as self-testing. For instance, the maximal quantum violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality certifies that the underlying state contains the two-qubit maximally entangled state and the measurements of one party contains a pair of anti-commuting qubit observables. As a consequence, the other party automatically verifies the set of states remotely steered, namely the "assemblage", is in the eigenstates of a pair of anti-commuting observables. It is natural to ask if the quantum violation of the Bell inequality is not maximally achieved, or if one does not care about self-testing the state or measurements, are we capable of estimating how close the underlying assemblage is to the reference one? In this work, we provide a systematic device-independent estimation by proposing a framework called "robust self-testing of steerable quantum assemblages". In particular, we consider assemblages violating several paradigmatic Bell inequalities and obtain the robust self-testing statement for each scenario. Our result is device-independent (DI), i.e., no assumption is made on the shared state and the measurement devices involved. Our work thus not only paves a way for exploring the connection between the boundary of quantum set of correlations and steerable assemblages, but also provides a useful tool in the areas of DI quantum certification. As two explicit applications, we show 1) that it can be used for an alternative proof of the protocol of DI certification of all entangled two-qubit states proposed by Bowles et al., and 2) that it can be used to verify all non-entanglement-breaking qubit channels with fewer assumptions compared with the work of Rosset et al.
The idea of self-testing is to render guarantees concerning the inner workings of a device based on the measurement statistics. It is one of the most formidable quantum certification and benchmarking schemes. Recently it was shown [A. Coladangelo, K. T. Goh, and V. Scarani, Nat. Commun. 8, 15485 (2017)] that all pure bipartite entangled states can be self-tested in the device-independent scenario by employing subspace methods introduced by Yang and Navascu\'es [Phys. Rev. A 87, 050102(R) (2013)]. Here, we have adapted their method to show that any bipartite pure entangled state can be certified in the semi-device-independent scenario through quantum steering. Analogous to the tilted Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality, we use a steering inequality called the tilted steering inequality for certifying any pure two-qubit entangled state. Furthermore, we use this inequality to certify any bipartite pure entangled state by certifying two-dimensional subspaces of the qudit state by observing the structure of the set of assemblages obtained on the trusted side after measurements are made on the untrusted side. As a feature of quantum state certification via steering, we use the notion of assemblage-based robust state certification to provide robustness bounds for the certification result in the case of pure maximally entangled states of any local dimension.
Self-testing refers to the phenomenon that certain extremal quantum correlations (almost) uniquely identify the quantum system under consideration. For instance, observing the maximal violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequality certifies that the two parties share a singlet. While self-testing results are known for several classes of states, in many cases they are only applicable if the observed statistics are almost perfect, which makes them unsuitable for practical applications. Practically relevant self-testing bounds are much less common and moreover they all result from a single numerical method (with one exception which we discuss in detail). In this work we present a new technique for proving analytic self-testing bounds of practically relevant robustness. We obtain improved bounds for the case of self-testing the singlet using the CHSH inequality (in particular we show that nontrivial fidelity with the singlet can be achieved as long as the violation exceeds β^{*}=(16+14sqrt[2])/17≈2.11). In the case of self-testing the tripartite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state using the Mermin inequality, we derive a bound which not only improves on previously known results but turns out to be tight. We discuss other scenarios to which our technique can be immediately applied.
Entangled two-qubit states are the core building blocks for constructing quantum communication networks. Their accurate verification is crucial to the functioning of the networks, especially for untrusted networks. In this work we study the self-testing of two-qubit entangled states via steering inequalities, with robustness analysis against noise. More precisely, steering inequalities are constructed from the tilted Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality and its general form, to verify the general two-qubit entangled states. The study provides a good robustness bound, using both local extraction map and numerical semidefinite-programming methods. In particular, optimal local extraction maps are constructed in the analytical method, which yields the theoretical optimal robustness bound. To further improve the robustness of one-sided self-testing, we propose a family of three measurement settings steering inequalities. The result shows that three-setting steering inequality demonstrates an advantage over two-setting steering inequality on robust self-testing with noise. Moreover, to construct a practical verification protocol, we clarify the sample efficiency of our protocols in the one-sided device-independent scenario.
Self-testing is a method with which a classical user can certify the state and measurements of quantum systems in a device-independent way. In particular, self-testing of entangled states is of great importance in quantum information processing. An understandable example is that the maximal violation of the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality necessarily implies that the bipartite system shares a singlet. One essential question in self-testing is that, when one observes a nonmaximum violation, how far is the tested state from the target state (which maximally violates a certain Bell inequality)? The answer to this question describes the robustness of the used self-testing criterion, which is highly important in a practical sense. Recently, J. Kaniewski derived two analytic self-testing bounds for bipartite and tripartite systems. In this Letter, we experimentally investigate these two bounds with high-quality two-qubit and three-qubit entanglement sources. The results show that these bounds are valid for various entangled states that we prepared. Thereby, a proof-of-concept demonstration of robust self-testing is achieved, which improves on the previous results significantly.
It is well known that observing nonlocal correlations allows us to draw conclusions about the quantum systems under consideration. In some cases this yields a characterisation which is essentially complete, a phenomenon known as self-testing. Self-testing becomes particularly interesting if we can make the statement robust, so that it can be applied to a real experimental setup. For the simplest self-testing scenarios the most robust bounds come from the method based on operator inequalities. In this work we elaborate on this idea and apply it to the family of tilted Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) inequalities. These inequalities are maximally violated by partially entangled two-qubit states and our goal is to estimate the quality of the state based only on the observed violation. For these inequalities we have reached a candidate bound and while we have not been able to prove it analytically, we have gathered convincing numerical evidence that it holds. Our final contribution is a proof that in the usual formulation, the CHSH inequality only becomes a self-test when the violation exceeds a certain threshold. This shows that self-testing scenarios fall into two distinct classes depending on whether they exhibit such a threshold or not.