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Nature Communications

All pure multipartite entangled states of qubits can be self-tested

Maria Balanzó-Juandó, Andrea Coladangelo, Remigiusz Augusiak, Antonio Acín, Ivan Šupić

Published Mar 24, 2026• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

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.

DOI
10.1038/s41467-026-70829-x

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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.
Self-testing refers to the certification of quantum states and measurements based entirely on the correlations exhibited by measurements on separate subsystems. In the bipartite case, self-testing of states has been completely characterized, up to local isometries, as there exist protocols that self-test arbitrary pure states of any local dimension. Much less is known in the multipartite case, where an important difference with respect to the bipartite case appears: there exist multipartite states that are not equivalent, up to local isometries, to their complex conjugate. Thus, any self-testing characterization must in general be complete up to not only local unitaries, but also complex conjugation. Under these premises, in this work, we give a complete characterization of self-testing in the multipartite qubit case.
Quantum technologies promise advantages over their classical counterparts in the fields of computation, security and sensing. It is thus desirable that classical users are able to obtain guarantees on quantum devices, even without any knowledge of their inner workings. That such classical certification is possible at all is remarkable: it is a consequence of the violation of Bell inequalities by entangled quantum systems. Device-independent self-testing refers to the most complete such certification: it enables a classical user to uniquely identify the quantum state shared by uncharacterized devices by simply inspecting the correlations of measurement outcomes. Self-testing was first demonstrated for the singlet state and a few other examples of self-testable states were reported in recent years. Here, we address the long-standing open question of whether every pure bipartite entangled state is self-testable. We answer it affirmatively by providing explicit self-testing correlations for all such states.
Abstract Quantum entanglement is the key resource for quantum information processing. Device-independent certification of entangled states is a long standing open question, which arouses the concept of self-testing. The central aim of self-testing is to certify the state and measurements of quantum systems without any knowledge of their inner workings, even when the used devices cannot be trusted. Specifically, utilizing Bell’s theorem, one can infer the appearance of certain entangled state when the maximum violation is observed, e.g., to self-test singlet state using CHSH inequality. In this work, by constructing a versatile entanglement source, we experimentally demonstrate a generalized self-testing proposal for various bipartite entangled states up to four dimensions. We show that the high-quality generated states can approach the maximum violations of the utilized Bell inequalities, and thus, their Schmidt coefficients can be precisely inferred by self-testing them into respective target states with near-unity fidelities. Our results indicate the superior completeness and robustness of this method and promote self-testing as a practical tool for developing quantum techniques.
Certification of quantum systems and their properties has become a field of intensive study. Here, taking advantage of the one-sided device-independent (1SDI) scenario (also known as the quantum steering scenario), we propose a self-testing scheme for all bipartite entangled states using a single family of steering inequalities with the minimal number of two measurements per party. Building on this scheme we then show how to certify all rank-one extremal measurements, including nonprojective d2{d}^{2}d2-outcome measurements, which in turn can be used for certification of the maximal amount of randomness, that is, 2log2d2{\mathrm{log}}_{2}d2log2​d bits. Finally, in the particular case of d=3d=3d=3, we propose an extended Bell scenario that transforms a 1SDI scheme to ``almost device independent.''
Device-independent certification, also known as self-testing, aims at guaranteeing the proper functioning of untrusted and uncharacterized devices. For example, the quality of an unknown source expected to produce two-qubit maximally entangled states can be evaluated in a bipartite scenario, each party using two binary measurements. The most robust approach consists in deducing the fidelity of produced states with respect to a two-qubit maximally entangled state from the violation of the CHSH inequality. In this paper, we show how the self-testing of two-qubit maximally entangled states is improved by a refined analysis of measurement statistics. The use of suitably chosen Bell tests, depending on the observed correlations, allows one to conclude higher fidelities than ones previously known. In particular, nontrivial self-testing statements can be obtained from correlations that cannot be exploited by a CHSH-based self-testing strategy. Our results not only provide insight into the set of quantum correlations suited for self-testing, but also facilitate the experimental implementations of device-independent certifications.
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.