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arXiv:quant-ph/0307205 · Quantum Information and Computation

Self testing quantum apparatus

Dominic Mayers, Andrew Chi-Chih Yao

Published Jul 1, 2004• 366 citations
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Abstract

We study, in the context of quantum information and quantum communication, a configuration of devices that includes (1) a source of some unknown bipartite quantum state that is claimed to be the Bell state $\Phi^+$ and (2) two spatially separated but otherwise unknown measurement apparatus, one on each side, that are each claimed to execute an orthogonal measurement at an angle $\theta \in \{-\pi/8, 0, \pi/8\}$ that is chosen by the user. We show that, if the nine distinct probability distributions that are generated by the self checking configuration, one for each pair of angles, are consistent with the specifications, the source and the two measurement apparatus are guaranteed to be identical to the claimed specifications up to a local change of basis on each side. We discuss the connection with quantum cryptography. testing quantum apparatus (pp273-286) D. Mayers and A. Yao We study, in the context of quantum information and quantum communication, a configuration of devices that includes (1) a source of some unknown bipartite quantum state that is claimed to be the Bell state $\Phi^+$ and (2) two spatially separated but otherwise unknown measurement apparatus, one on each side, that are each claimed to execute an orthogonal measurement at an angle $\theta \in \{-\pi/8, 0, \pi/8\}$ that is chosen by the user. We show that, if the nine distinct probability distributions that are generated by the self checking configuration, one for each pair of angles, are consistent with the specifications, the source and the two measurement apparatus are guaranteed to be identical to the claimed specifications up to a local change of basis on each side. We discuss the connection with quantum cryptography.

DOI
10.26421/qic4.4-3

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We study, in the context of quantum information and quantum communication, a configuration of devices that includes (1) a source of some unknown bipartite quantum state that is claimed to be the Bell state Φ+\Phi^+Φ+ and (2) two spatially separated but otherwise unknown measurement apparatus, one on each side, that are each claimed to execute an orthogonal measurement at an angle θ∈{−π/8,0,π/8}\theta \in \{-\pi/8, 0, \pi/8\}θ∈{−π/8,0,π/8} that is chosen by the user. We show that, if the nine distinct probability distributions that are generated by the self checking configuration, one for each pair of angles, are consistent with the specifications, the source and the two measurement apparatus are guaranteed to be identical to the claimed specifications up to a local change of basis on each side. We discuss the connection with quantum cryptography. testing quantum apparatus (pp273-286) D. Mayers and A. Yao We study, in the context of quantum information and quantum communication, a configuration of devices that includes (1) a source of some unknown bipartite quantum state that is claimed to be the Bell state Φ+\Phi^+Φ+ and (2) two spatially separated but otherwise unknown measurement apparatus, one on each side, that are each claimed to execute an orthogonal measurement at an angle θ∈{−π/8,0,π/8}\theta \in \{-\pi/8, 0, \pi/8\}θ∈{−π/8,0,π/8} that is chosen by the user. We show that, if the nine distinct probability distributions that are generated by the self checking configuration, one for each pair of angles, are consistent with the specifications, the source and the two measurement apparatus are guaranteed to be identical to the claimed specifications up to a local change of basis on each side. We discuss the connection with quantum cryptography.
Self-testing is a method to characterise an arbitrary quantum system based only on its classical input-output correlations, and plays an important role in device-independent quantum information processing as well as quantum complexity theory. Prior works on self-testing require the assumption that the system’s state is shared among multiple parties that only perform local measurements and cannot communicate. Here, we replace the setting of multiple non-communicating parties, which is difficult to enforce in practice, by a single computationally bounded party. Specifically, we construct a protocol that allows a classical verifier to robustly certify that a single computationally bounded quantum device must have prepared a Bell pair and performed single-qubit measurements on it, up to a change of basis applied to both the device’s state and measurements. This means that under computational assumptions, the verifier is able to certify the presence of entanglement, a property usually closely associated with two separated subsystems, inside a single quantum device. To achieve this, we build on techniques first introduced by Brakerski et al. (2018) and Mahadev (2018) which allow a classical verifier to constrain the actions of a quantum device assuming the device does not break post-quantum cryptography.
Self-testing is a method to characterise an arbitrary quantum system based only on its classical input-output correlations, and plays an important role in device-independent quantum information processing as well as quantum complexity theory. Prior works on self-testing require the assumption that the system’s state is shared among multiple parties that only perform local measurements and cannot communicate. Here, we replace the setting of multiple non-communicating parties, which is difficult to enforce in practice, by a single computationally bounded party. Specifically, we construct a protocol that allows a classical verifier to robustly certify that a single computationally bounded quantum device must have prepared a Bell pair and performed single-qubit measurements on it, up to a change of basis applied to both the device’s state and measurements. This means that under computational assumptions, the verifier is able to certify the presence of entanglement, a property usually closely associated with two separated subsystems, inside a single quantum device. To achieve this, we build on techniques first introduced by Brakerski et al. (2018) and Mahadev (2018) which allow a classical verifier to constrain the actions of a quantum device assuming the device does not break post-quantum cryptography.
Self-testing is a method to characterise an arbitrary quantum system based only on its classical input-output correlations, and plays an important role in device-independent quantum information processing as well as quantum complexity theory. Prior works on self-testing require the assumption that the system's state is shared among multiple parties that only perform local measurements and cannot communicate. Here, we replace the setting of multiple non-communicating parties, which is difficult to enforce in practice, by a single computationally bounded party. Specifically, we construct a protocol that allows a classical verifier to robustly certify that a single computationally bounded quantum device must have prepared a Bell pair and performed single-qubit measurements on it, up to a change of basis applied to both the device's state and measurements. This means that under computational assumptions, the verifier is able to certify the presence of entanglement, a property usually closely associated with two separated subsystems, inside a single quantum device. To achieve this, we build on techniques first introduced by Brakerski et al. (2018) and Mahadev (2018) which allow a classical verifier to constrain the actions of a quantum device assuming the device does not break post-quantum cryptography.
Self-tested quantum information processing provides a means for doing useful information processing with untrusted quantum apparatus. Previous work was limited to performing computations and protocols in real Hilbert spaces, which is not a serious obstacle if one is only interested in final measurement statistics being correct (for example, getting the correct factors of a large number after running Shor's factoring algorithm). This limitation was shown by McKague et al. to be fundamental, since there is no way to experimentally distinguish any quantum experiment from a special simulation using states and operators with only real coefficients. In this paper, we show that one can still do a meaningful self-test of quantum apparatus with complex amplitudes. In particular, we define a family of simulations of quantum experiments, based on complex conjugation, with two interesting properties. First, we are able to define a self-test which may be passed only by states and operators that are equivalent to simulations within the family. This extends work of Mayers and Yao and Magniez et al. in self-testing of quantum apparatus, and includes a complex measurement. Second, any of the simulations in the family may be used to implement a secure 6-state QKD protocol, which was previously not known to be implementable in a self-tested framework. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.
Observed quantum correlations are known to determine in certain cases the underlying quantum state and measurements. This phenomenon is known as (quantum) self-testing .Self-testing constitutes a significant research area with practical and theoretical ramifications for quantum information theory. But since its conception two decades ago by Mayers and Yao, the common way to rigorously formulate self-testing has been in terms of operator-algebraic identities, and this formulation lacks an operational interpretation. In particular, it is unclear how to formulate self-testing in other physical theories, in formulations of quantum theory not referring to operator-algebra, or in scenarios causally different from the standard one.In this paper, we explain how to understand quantum self-testing operationally, in terms of causally structured dilations of the input-output channel encoding the correlations. These dilations model side-information which leaks to an environment according to a specific schedule, and we show how self-testing concerns the relative strength between such scheduled leaks of information. As such, the title of our paper has double meaning: we recast conventional quantum self-testing in terms of information-leaks to an environment – and this realises quantum self-testing as a special case within the surroundings of a general operational framework.Our new approach to quantum self-testing not only supplies an operational understanding apt for various generalisations, but also resolves some unexplained aspects of the existing definition, naturally suggests a distance measure suitable for robust self-testing, and points towards self-testing as a modular concept in a larger, cryptographic perspective.
Quantum information has the potential to disrupt the present computational landscape. Much of this potential rests on the existence of efficient quantum algorithms for classically intractable problems and of quantum cryptographic protocols for tasks that are provably impossible to realize classically. At the heart of many quantum advantages is one of the most counterintuitive features of quantum mechanics, known as entanglement. The central motivating question of this thesis is the following: if quantum devices will perform tasks that are beyond the reach of classical devices, can we hope to certify that they are performing these tasks correctly? Bell's theorem, a landmark result in physics, provides a partial answer to this question: it asserts that measurements on spatially isolated, but entangled, particles can result in outcomes that are correlated in a way that cannot be explained by any local hidden variable theory (such as Newtonian physics). A direct operational consequence of this theorem is that one can devise a statistical test to certify the presence of entanglement (and hence of genuine quantumness). Remarkably, nature allows us to take this certification one step further: in some cases, the correlation of measurement outcomes is sufficient to single out a unique quantum setup compatible with this correlation. This phenomenon is often referred to as self-testing, and is the central topic of this thesis. In the first part of this thesis, we review the basic terminology and results in the theory of self-testing. We then explore a concrete application to the problem of verifiably delegating a quantum computation. Our main technical contribution is a test that robustly certifies products of single-qubit Clifford measurements on many EPR pairs. We employ this test to obtain a protocol which allows a classical user to verifiably delegate her quantum computation to two spatially isolated quantum servers. The overall complexity of our protocol is near-optimal, requiring resources that scale almost linearly in the size of the circuit being delegated. In the second part of this thesis, the driving question is the following: what is the class of quantum states and measurements that can be certified through self-testing? Does self-testing only apply to a few special cases, like EPR pairs or copies of EPR pairs, or are these instances of a more general phenomenon? One of the main results of this thesis is that we settle this question for the case of bipartite states. We show the existence of a self-testing correlation for any pure bipartite entangled state of any finite local dimension. We then move on to explore the multipartite case, and we show that a significantly larger class of states can be self-tested than was previously known. This includes all multipartite partially entangled GHZ states, and more generally all multipartite qudit states which admit a Schmidt decomposition. In the final part of this thesis, we explore connections of the theory of self-testing to basic questions about entanglement and quantum correlation sets. In particular, we set out to understand the expressive power of infinite-dimensional quantum systems. We consider two questions: can spatially isolated quantum systems of infinite dimension produce correlations that are unattainable by finite-dimensional systems? Does there exist a correlation that cannot be attained exactly by spatially isolated quantum systems (not even infinite-dimensional ones), but can be approximated arbitrarily well by a sequence of finite or infinite-dimensional systems? The first question was posed by Tsirelson in 1993, and its answer has been elusive. One of the main results of this thesis is a resolution of this question. The second question is better known as the "non-closure of the set of quantum correlations", and was answered affirmatively in a breakthrough of Slofstra. We give a new elementary proof of this result which leverages one of our self-testing results and a phenomenon known as embezzlement.