We introduce the dimension-restricted prepare and broadcast (PAB) scenario, which generalizes standard prepare-and-measure frameworks. Here, the system prepared by a sender undergoes a broadcasting transformation before being locally measured by multiple receivers. We develop a hierarchy of classical, quantum, and nonsignalling models describing this scenario, characterize their corresponding correlation sets, and derive new families of Bell-like inequalities together with linear and semidefinite programming methods for their certification. First, assuming shared randomness, we prove that the hierarchy collapses into a single set whenever we consider only one measurement per party. Then, considering multiple possible measurements, we show that PAB scenarios allow the activation of nonclassicality, revealing genuinely nonclassical features in resources that admit classical descriptions in standard prepare-and-measure or Bell settings.
We introduce the dimension-restricted prepare and broadcast (PAB) scenario, which generalizes standard prepare-and-measure frameworks. Here, the system prepared by a sender undergoes a broadcasting transformation before being locally measured by multiple receivers. We develop a hierarchy of classical, quantum, and nonsignalling models describing this scenario, characterize their corresponding correlation sets, and derive new families of Bell-like inequalities together with linear and semidefinite programming methods for their certification. First, assuming shared randomness, we prove that the hierarchy collapses into a single set whenever we consider only one measurement per party. Then, considering multiple possible measurements, we show that PAB scenarios allow the activation of nonclassicality, revealing genuinely nonclassical features in resources that admit classical descriptions in standard prepare-and-measure or Bell settings.
We investigate the prepare-and-broadcast scenario, a multipartite extension of dimension-constrained prepare-and-measure experiments in which a quantum system is distributed to multiple receivers. We derive fundamental trade-offs between prepare-and-measure witnesses, Bell nonlocality, and quantum random access code performance. We further develop a semi-device-independent randomness certification framework based on prepare-and-broadcast witnesses, showing that the maximal quantum violation certifies two bits of joint randomness, exceeding the limit achievable from the CHSH inequality while remaining robust to noise. Finally, we show that the prepare-and-broadcast scenario naturally accommodates stronger adversarial models in which the eavesdropper retains a quantum system correlated with the measurement device, providing a natural framework for semi-device-independent randomness certification against quantum side information.
Preparing and measuring physical systems are the operational building blocks of any physical experiment, and to describe them is the first purpose of any physical theory.Remarkably, even when only uncharacterized preparation and measurement devices are present, it is sometimes possible to distinguish between the behaviors of quantum and classical systems from only observational data.Certifying the physical origin of measurement statistics in the prepare and measure scenario is of primal importance for developing quantum networks, distributing quantum keys, and certifying randomness, to mention a few applications, but, surprisingly, no general methods to do so are known.We progress on this problem by crafting a general, sufficient condition to certify that a given set of preparations can only generate classical statistics, for any number of generalized measurements.As an application, we employ the method to demonstrate nonclassicality activation in the prepare and measure scenario, also considering its application in random access codes.Following that, we adapt our method to certify, again through a sufficient condition, whether a given set of measurements can never give rise to nonclassical behaviors, irrespective of what preparations they may act upon.This, in turn, allows us to find a large set of incompatible measurements that cannot be used to demonstrate nonclassicality, thus showing incompatibility is not sufficient for nonclassicality in the prepare and measure scenario.
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.
Prepare-and-measure scenarios are among the simplest and most widely used settings for quantum communication. A sender prepares a physical system in one of several possible states, which a receiver then measures. Despite this simple structure, these scenarios offer a rich framework for exploring the differences between classical and quantum communication, revealing quantum advantages, and developing protocols for quantum cryptography and device certification. In this tutorial, we give a ground-up introduction to prepare-and-measure scenarios and the methods used to study them. We introduce different frameworks for constraining and characterising communication, with an emphasis on semi-device-independent approaches to quantum information. We also cover modern convex-optimisation techniques for characterising the correlations achievable in these scenarios and illustrate how these tools can be applied in practice. Our aim is to give newcomers the conceptual and technical foundations needed to approach the current literature and apply prepare-and-measure methods in their own research. We conclude with a discussion of open problems and directions for future work.
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.
We provide the first systematic technique for deriving witnesses of contextuality in prepare-transform-measure scenarios. More specifically, we show how linear quantifier elimination can be used to compute a polytope of correlations consistent with generalized noncontextuality in such scenarios. This polytope is specified as a set of noncontextuality inequalities that are necessary and sufficient conditions for observed data in the scenario to admit of a classical explanation relative to any linear operational identities, if one ignores some constraints from diagram preservation. While including these latter constraints generally leads to tighter inequalities, it seems that nonlinear quantifier elimination would be required to systematically include them. We also provide a linear program which can certify the nonclassicality of a set of numerical data arising in a prepare-transform-measure experiment. We apply our results to get a robust noncontextuality inequality for transformations that can be violated within the stabilizer subtheory. Finally, we give a simple algorithm for computing all the linear operational identities holding among a given set of states, of transformations, or of measurements.