Information causality (IC) was introduced as a physical principle constraining correlations in non-signaling theories. Whether it can recover the exact quantum correlation boundary, beyond Uffink's inequality, has remained an open question. Here, we combine its generalized formulation for correlated inputs with a new communication protocol to derive quantum Bell inequalities that exactly characterize the quantum correlations in the simplest bipartite Bell scenario, with two binary measurements. In particular, we derive the Tsirelson-Landau-Masanes criterion directly from IC. Thus, the generalized IC implies macroscopic locality, while we also present macroscopically local correlations that violate the generalized IC. This establishes that generalized IC is a strictly stronger principle in this scenario. Together with our earlier result that generalized IC implies a nontrivial communication complexity principle, these findings strengthen the role of information causality in explaining the limits of quantum nonlocality and provide a systematic route to deriving tighter bounds on the set of quantum correlations in more general Bell scenarios.
Bell nonlocality places the long-standing philosophical disputes over the nature of quantum theory on a mathematically rigorous, experimentally testable footing, positioning quantum mechanics between local realism and the most general no-signaling theories. Yet the precise quantum boundary has remained elusive even in the minimal Bell scenario, where the extreme points generating the set are known. Here we characterize this boundary through a computable necessary and sufficient criterion: a correlation is quantum if and only if it can be decomposed into an extreme quantum correlation and a classical correlation. The criterion follows from our proof that every Bell functional exhibiting quantum advantage admits a unique quantum maximizer. We further classify the finitely many maximal-face structures containing each nonlocal exposed point according to their local deterministic vertices. By sharply distinguishing physically realizable correlations from nonphysical ones, these results resolve a long-standing open problem and provide a new foundation for identifying the principles underlying quantum theory and determining the ultimate information-theoretic limits of quantum correlations.
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
128cot4θ calls for the Schmidt state
cosθ∣00⟩+sinθ∣11⟩,
0<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.
Bell inequalities reveal the fundamentally nonlocal character of quantum mechanics. In this regard, one of the interesting problems is to explore all possible Bell inequalities that demonstrate a gap between local and nonlocal quantum behaviour. This is useful for the geometric characterisation of the set of nonlocal correlations achievable within quantum theory. Moreover, it provides a systematic way to construct Bell inequalities that are tailored to specific quantum information processing tasks. This characterisation is well understood in the simplest
(2,2,2) scenario, namely two parties performing two binary outcome measurements. However, beyond this setting, relatively few Bell inequalities are known, and the situation becomes particularly scarce in scenarios involving a greater number of outcomes. Here, we consider the
(2,2,3) scenario, or two parties performing two three-outcome measurements, and characterise all Bell inequalities that can arise from the simplest sum-of-squares decomposition and are maximally violated by the maximally entangled state of local dimension three. We then utilise them to self-test this state, along with a class of three-outcome measurements.
Quantum nonlocality and the uncertainty principle are two fundamental cornerstones of quantum theory, reflecting totally different aspects that distinguish it from classical theory. However, Oppenheim and Wehner introduced fine-grained uncertainty relations (FGURs) to account for the degree of quantum nonlocality. In the simplest Bell scenario, they showed that the quantum nonlocality measured by the maximal violation of some Bell inequality was determined by the FGUR. Along this line of research, we first derive explicit FGURs with general weights about probability distributions of two general projective measurements on local systems. Then we split those joint probabilities of Bell inequalities into a single-party conditional probability and the remaining joint probabilities so that the weighted FGURs can be applied straightforwardly to obtain the maximal violation in various scenarios ranging from bipartite, tripartite, to a complete set of multipartite Bell inequalities. Furthermore, in the bipartite scenario, the exact correlation boundary can be shown to be solely determined by our weighted local FGURs.
Information causality (IC) was introduced as a physical principle that imposes constraints on the non-local correlations between two parties (Alice and Bob) in a Bell scenario. Specifically, it states that the information that Bob can gain about an
n-bit database held by Alice is bounded by the information she communicates to him. To date, the question whether IC for any
n∈N singles out the set of quantum correlations remains open, meaning that it is unknown whether for any number of inputs
m and outputs
d of the two parties the set of correlations that satisfy IC exactly coincides with the quantum correlations. In this work, we answer this question in the negative. Firstly, we show that for any finite database length
n≥2, there is a bipartite set of correlations that satisfies IC for all compatible protocols and that exhibits post-quantum correlations in the Bell scenario with
n+1 inputs and
2 outcomes per party. This result relies on constructing an entropic proof of IC for GPTs that may be of independent interest. We further show that in the Bell scenario with
n+1 inputs and
2 outcomes per party, our constructed sets of correlations lead to neither a superset nor a subset of the quantum correlations. Secondly, we construct a set of correlations in the Bell scenario with
3 inputs and
2 outputs per party that satisfies IC (for all database sizes
n∈N) and that includes post-quantum points. Consequently, all known formulations of information causality fail to fully characterize the bipartite set of quantum correlations, already in the
3-input,
2-outcome Bell scenario.