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arXiv:2605.15106

Scalable self-testing of generic multipartite quantum states

Jinchang Liu, Elias X. Huber, Zhenyu Du, Xingjian Zhang, Xiongfeng Ma

quant-phSubmitted May 14, 2026• Announced May 15, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Characterizing large quantum systems with minimal assumptions is a central challenge in quantum information science. Self-testing provides the strongest form of certification by identifying the underlying quantum state solely from observed measurement statistics. However, existing self-testing methods for generic $n$-partite states face a scalability barrier, requiring exponentially many samples in the system size. In this work, we overcome this barrier by introducing a protocol that robustly self-tests almost all $n$-qubit states with only polynomial sample complexity. The key ingredient is an efficient scheme for device-independently evaluating multipartite Pauli measurements, which can be implemented using only a linear number of ancillary Bell pairs together with standard projective and Bell measurements, well within the reach of current quantum technology. Beyond self-testing states, our scheme provides a general framework for implementing a wide range of learning and certification protocols in the device-independent setting, thereby opening a scalable route to device-independent quantum information processing in large-scale quantum networks.

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47 pages, 5 figures, comments are welcome!

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Characterizing large quantum systems with minimal assumptions is a central challenge in quantum information science. Self-testing provides the strongest form of certification by identifying the underlying quantum state solely from observed measurement statistics. However, existing self-testing methods for generic nnn-partite states face a scalability barrier, requiring exponentially many samples in the system size. In this work, we overcome this barrier by introducing a protocol that robustly self-tests almost all nnn-qubit states with only polynomial sample complexity. The key ingredient is an efficient scheme for device-independently evaluating multipartite Pauli measurements, which can be implemented using only a linear number of ancillary Bell pairs together with standard projective and Bell measurements, well within the reach of current quantum technology. Beyond self-testing states, our scheme provides a general framework for implementing a wide range of learning and certification protocols in the device-independent setting, thereby opening a scalable route to device-independent quantum information processing in large-scale quantum networks.
Characterizing increasingly complex quantum systems is a central task in quantum information science, yet experimental costs often scale prohibitively with system size. Certifying key properties using simple local measurements is highly desirable but challenging. In this work, we introduce a highly general certification framework based on a physical phenomenon that we call localizable quantumness: for generic many-body states, essential quantum properties are robustly preserved within the projected ensembles on small subsystems after performing local projective measurements on the rest of the system. Leveraging this insight, we develop protocols to certify global properties—including multipartite entanglement, circuit complexity, and quantum magic—by witnessing them on a small, accessible subsystem. Remarkably, randomizing the local measurement bases extends this capability to certify state fidelity. Relying solely on local Pauli measurements, these protocols achieve constant sample complexity and robustness for almost all quantum states, including a wide range of physically relevant states. For certifying the fidelity of n -qubit states, this O ( 1 ) scaling dramatically improves upon state-of-the-art protocols requiring O ( n 4 ) samples. Our unified framework provides both a practical toolkit for large-scale quantum certification and a novel lens into complex many-body systems.
Self-testing is an examination for characterizing unknown quantum devices based on correlations of observed statistics in a black-box scenario. With development of large-scale quantum networks, the requirement for self-testing multipartite entangled measurements has become very demanding. We develop here a general procedure for self-testing arbitrary generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger-state (GHZ-state) measurements which applies to any number of parties. Moreover, it turns out that the existing result for the three-qubit GHZ-state measurement is recovered as a special case. Our results will motivate operational certification of quantum devices related to device-independent quantum information tasks for various scenarios in complicated quantum networks.
Practical robust self-testing of multipartite entanglement has so far been restricted to small-scale systems due to error bounds that degrade severely with system size. In this work, we establish multipartite self-testing with robustness independent of the size of the quantum network. We derive a fully analytic, device-independent self-testing bound for nnn-qubit Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. The bound scales linearly with the observed violation error and lies universally within a constant factor of two from a theoretical upper bound. Furthermore, the operator-inequality framework reduces the verification of the conjectured optimal bound to a highly efficient numerical check, which we perform up to n=100n=100n=100. Consequently, GHZ entanglement can be certified under a fixed noise level in arbitrarily large systems, enabling scalable device-independent verification.
Device-independent self-testing refers to the certification of quantum states based entirely on the correlations exhibited by measurements on separate subsystems. The fact that such a certification is possible at all is remarkable in its own right, and is intimately connected to the violation Bell’s inequalities by entangled quantum systems. In the bipartite case, it is known that, for every pure entangled bipartite state, there exists a device-independent self-testing protocol. Despite the growing interest in self-testing, an analogous universal result in the multipartite setting has remained elusive. In this work, we prove such a universal result for qubits: for every pure n-qubit entangled state, we give an explicit Bell-scenario correlations that self-tests that state, up to local isometries and, where relevant, complex conjugation. The authors prove that any pure entangled state of multiple quantum bits (qubits) can be uniquely identified using only measurement statistics, without trusting the devices, resolving a long-standing open problem in quantum certification.
Device-independent certification of quantum states enables the characterization of states within a device under minimal physical assumptions. A major problem in this regard is to certify quantum states using minimal resources. Aiming to address this problem, we consider a multipartite quantum steering scenario involving an arbitrary number of parties, of which only one is trusted, meaning that the measurements performed by this party are known. Consequently, the self-testing scheme is almost device-independent. Importantly, all the parties can only perform two measurements each, which is the minimal number of measurements required to observe any form of quantum nonlocality. Then, we propose steering inequalities that are maximally violated by three major classes of genuinely multipartite entangled (GME) states: graph states of arbitrary local dimension, Schmidt states of arbitrary local dimension, and NNN-qubit generalized W states. Using the proposed inequalities, we then provide an almost device-independent certification of the above GME states. Restricting to qubits, we also lift our almost device-independent scheme to device-independent self-testing.
Device-independent certification of multipartite entangled states plays a central role in a wide range of practical applications, including quantum networks, conference key agreement, and verifiable distributed quantum computation. A particularly important class of multipartite entangled states is the class of Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. Many Bell operators have been proposed to self-test GHZ states. However, in practical scenarios, due to imperfections and the finite collection of statistics, the observed statistics do not satisfy the ideal self-testing relations. Hence, it becomes essential to investigate and compare the robustness of the different self-testing protocols. In this work, we investigate the robustness of self-testing schemes constructed from Bell operators due to Svetlichny and Mermin--Ardehali--Belinskii--Klyshko (MABK), using the analytic operator-inequality framework developed by Kaniewski [\href{https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.070402}{Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 070402 (2016)}]. We derive lower bounds on the extractable fidelity as a function of the observed value of these Bell operators. Although these protocols self-test the same underlying state, they exhibit markedly different levels of robustness. By comparing the resulting fidelity bounds, we demonstrate that the self-testing scheme based on the Svetlichny's Bell operator is the more robust among the two. Our results thus identify the Svetlichny operator based self-testing protocol as the most favorable candidate for device-independent certification of GHZ states in realistic, noisy experimental scenarios.