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arXiv:2607.13645

Effects of coherent and incoherent measurement imperfections on multipartite quantum nonlocality and quantum key distribution

Qiong Wang, Wen-Long Qiao, Qing Chen, Liu-Jun Wang

quant-phSubmitted Jul 15, 2026• Announced Jul 16, 2026• 0 citations
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Abstract

Multipartite Bell nonlocality is a central resource for device-independent quantum information protocols, but its practical certification is inevitably affected by imperfect measurements. We analyze how coherent angular misalignment and incoherent outcome flipping affect Bell-value degradation and nonlocality thresholds in $n$-partite GHZ states based on the Mermin, Svetlichny, and Mermin--Ardehali--Belinskii--Klyshko (MABK) inequalities. Coherent misalignment produces periodic angular violation windows whose individual widths shrink with the number of parties. In contrast, incoherent outcome flipping yields a single critical outcome-flipping probability, which increases with $n$ for MABK and the odd-$n$ Mermin inequalities, but decreases with $n$ for the Svetlichny inequality. Connecting the degraded Bell values to asymptotic Devetak--Winter key-rate bounds under a convex-combination attack model shows that secret-key generation imposes stricter constraints on measurement imperfections than nonlocality certification. These results provide quantitative benchmarks for robust multipartite nonlocality certification and key-rate estimation under measurement imperfections.

Comments
19 pages, 5 figures

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Multipartite Bell nonlocality is a central resource for device-independent quantum information protocols, but its practical certification is inevitably affected by imperfect measurements. We analyze how coherent angular misalignment and incoherent outcome flipping affect Bell-value degradation and nonlocality thresholds in nnn-partite GHZ states based on the Mermin, Svetlichny, and Mermin--Ardehali--Belinskii--Klyshko (MABK) inequalities. Coherent misalignment produces periodic angular violation windows whose individual widths shrink with the number of parties. In contrast, incoherent outcome flipping yields a single critical outcome-flipping probability, which increases with nnn for MABK and the odd-nnn Mermin inequalities, but decreases with nnn for the Svetlichny inequality. Connecting the degraded Bell values to asymptotic Devetak--Winter key-rate bounds under a convex-combination attack model shows that secret-key generation imposes stricter constraints on measurement imperfections than nonlocality certification. These results provide quantitative benchmarks for robust multipartite nonlocality certification and key-rate estimation under measurement imperfections.
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Bell nonlocality provides a device-independent (DI) way to certify quantum randomness, based on which true random numbers can be extracted from the observed correlations without detail characterizations on devices for quantum state preparation and measurement. However, the efficiency of current strategies for DI randomness certification is still heavily constrained when it comes to non-maximal Bell values, especially for multiple parties. Here, we present a family of multipartite Bell inequalities that allows to certify optimal quantum randomness and self-test GHZ (Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger) states, which are inspired from the stabilizer group of the GHZ state. Due to the simple representation of stabilizer group for GHZ states, this family of Bell inequalities is of simple structure and can be easily expanded to more parties. Compared with the Mermin-type inequalities, this family of Bell inequality is more efficient in certifying quantum randomness when non-maximal Bell values achieved. Meanwhile, the general analytical upper bound for the Holevo quantity is presented, and achieves better performance compared with the MABK (Mermin-Ardehali-Belinskii-Klyshko) inequality, Parity-CHSH (Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt) inequality and Holz inequality at N=3N=3N=3, which is of particular interests for experimental researches on DI quantum cryptography in quantum networks.
The imperfection of measurements in real-world scenarios can compromise the performance of device-independent quantum key distribution (DIQKD) protocols. In this paper, we focus on a specific DIQKD protocol that relies on the violation of the Svetlichny’s inequality (SI), considering an eavesdropper utilizing the convex combination attack. Our analysis covers both the three-party DIQKD case and the general n-party scenario. Our main result is the relationship between the measurement accuracy and the extractable secret-key rate in all multi-party scenarios. The result demonstrates that as measurement accuracy improves, the extractable secret-key rate approaches 1, reaching its maximum value when the measurement accuracy is perfect. We reveal that achieving positive extractable secret-key rates requires a threshold measurement accuracy that is consistently higher than the critical measurement accuracy necessary to violate the SI. We depict these thresholds for n-party scenarios ranging from n=3 to n=10, demonstrating that as the number of parties (n) increases, both thresholds exhibit a rapid and monotonic convergence towards unity. Furthermore, we consider a scenario involving a non-maximally entangled state with imperfect measurements, where the emission of the initial GHZ state undergoes noise during transmission, resulting in a Werner state. The study further quantifies and demonstrates the relationship between the extractable secret-key rate, the visibility of the Werner state, and the measurement accuracy, specifically emphasizing the three-party scenario. This study aims to illuminate the influence of imperfect measurement accuracy on the security and performance of multi-party DIQKD protocols. The results emphasize the importance of high measurement accuracy in achieving positive secret-key rates and maintaining the violation of the SI.
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.
We introduce, for any bipartite Bell scenario, a measure that quantifies both the amount of nonlocality and the efficiency in device-independent quantum key distribution of a set of measurement outcome probabilities. It is a proper measure of nonlocality as it vanishes when this set is Bell local and does not increase under the allowed transformations of the nonlocality resource theory. This device-independent key rate RRR is defined by optimizing over a class of protocols, to generate the raw keys, in which each legitimate party does not use just one preselected measurement but randomly chooses at each round one among all the measurements at its disposal. A common and secret key can certainly be established when RRR is positive but not when it is zero. For any continuous proper measure of nonlocality NNN, RRR is tightly lower bounded by a nondecreasing function of NNN that vanishes when NNN does. There can thus be a threshold value for the amount of nonlocality as quantified by NNN above which a secret key is surely achievable. A readily computable measure with such a threshold exists for two two-outcome measurements per legitimate party.
Multipartite Bell tests provide a correlation-only route to benchmarking quantum processors, but their application at large scales is hindered by the rapid decay of many-body correlators under noise and exponentially many terms in conventional Bell expressions. Here we address these scalability obstacles by introducing a finite-setting generalized Mermin family of state-tailored Bell inequalities with analytic certification bounds, in which the measurement-setting number mmm provides an additional certification dimension complementary to the system size nnn. We show that, for the powers-of-two setting choices considered here, increasing mmm leaves the ideal normalized multipartite quantum value unchanged while lowering the relevant classical bounds, thereby strengthening the Bell-violation ratios and yielding an improved noise-robustness scaling compared to the standard Mermin inequality. We test this construction experimentally on a programmable superconducting processor by preparing Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states of up to 80 qubits. Using randomized sampling for direct Bell-operator estimation, we observe Bell ratios that grow exponentially with system size, certify a nonlocality depth of 14, and show that increasing mmm strengthens both the Bell ratio and depth certification. All results are obtained solely from measured correlators and analytical bounds, without readout correction, tomography, or model-based mitigation. Generalized Mermin inequalities therefore provide a sharper Bell benchmark for noisy large-scale GHZ states.