Quantum nonlocality is arguably among the most counter-intuitive phenomena predicted by quantum theory. In recent years, the development of an abstract theory of nonlocality has brought a much deeper understanding of the subject. In parallel, experimental progress allowed for the demonstration of quantum nonlocality in a wide range of physical systems, and brings us close to a final loophole-free Bell test. Here we combine these theoretical and experimental developments in order to explore the limits of quantum nonlocality. This approach represents a thorough test of quantum theory, and could provide evidence of new physics beyond the quantum model. Using a versatile and high-fidelity source of pairs of polarization entangled photons, we explore the boundary of quantum correlations, present the most nonlocal correlations ever reported, demonstrate the phenomenon of more nonlocality with less entanglement, and show that non-planar (and hence complex) qubit measurements can be necessary to reproduce the strong qubit correlations that we observed. Our results are in remarkable agreement with quantum predictions.
We present a simple family of Bell inequalities applicable to a scenario involving arbitrarily many parties, each of which performs two binary-outcome measurements. We show that these inequalities are members of the complete set of full-correlation Bell inequalities discovered by Werner-Wolf-Zukowski-Brukner. For scenarios involving a small number of parties, we further verify that these inequalities are facet-defining for the convex set of Bell-local correlations. Moreover, we show that the amount of quantum violation of these inequalities naturally manifests the extent to which the underlying system is genuinely many-body entangled. In other words, our Bell inequalities, when supplemented with the appropriate quantum bounds, naturally serve as device-independent witnesses for entanglement depth, allowing one to certify genuine k-partite entanglement in an arbitrary $nge k$-partite scenario without relying on any assumption about the measurements being performed, nor the dimension of the underlying physical system. A brief comparison is made between our witnesses and those based on some other Bell inequalities, as well as the quantum Fisher information. A family of witnesses for genuine k-partite nonlocality applicable to an arbitrary $nge k$-partite scenario based on our Bell inequalities is also presented.
We show that for all $nge3$, an example of an $n$-partite quantum correlation that is not genuinely multipartite nonlocal but rather exhibiting anonymous nonlocality, that is, nonlocal but biseparable with respect to all bipartitions, can be obtained by locally measuring the $n$-partite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state. This anonymity is a manifestation of the impossibility to attribute unambiguously the underlying multipartite nonlocality to any definite subset(s) of the parties, even though the correlation can indeed be produced by nonlocal collaboration involving only such subsets. An explicit biseparable decomposition of these correlations is provided for any partitioning of the $n$ parties into two groups. Two possible applications of these anonymous GHZ correlations in the device-independent setting are discussed: multipartite secret sharing between any two groups of parties and bipartite quantum key distribution that is robust against nearly arbitrary leakage of information.
The characterization of quantum correlations in terms of information-theoretic resource has been a fruitful approach to understand the power of quantum correlations as a resource. While bipartite entanglement and Bell inequality violation in this setting have been extensively studied, relatively little is known about their multipartite counterpart. In this paper, we apply and adapt the recently proposed definitions of multipartite nonlocality [Phys. Rev. A 88, 014102] to the three- and four-partite scenario to gain new insight on the resource aspect of multipartite nonlocal quantum correlations. Specifically, we show that reproducing certain tripartite quantum correlations requires mixtures of classical resources --- be it the ability to change the groupings or the time orderings of measurements. Thus, when seen from the perspective of biseparable one-way classical signaling resources, certain tripartite quantum correlations do not admit a definite causal order. In the four- partite scenario, we obtain a superset description of the set of biseparable correlations which can be produced by allowing two groups of bipartite non-signaling resources. Quantum violation of the resulting Bell-like inequalities are investigated. As a byproduct, we obtain some new examples of device-independent witnesses for genuine four-partite entanglement, and also device-independent witnesses that allows one to infer the structure of the underlying multipartite entanglement.
Bells theorem is a fundamental theorem in physics concerning the incompatibility between some correlations predicted by quantum theory and a large class of physical theories. In this paper, we introduce the hypothesis of accountability, which demands that it is possible to explain the correlations of the data collected in many runs of a Bell experiment in terms of what happens in each single run. Under this assumption, and making use of a recent result by Colbeck and Renner [Nat. Commun. 2, 411 (2011)], we then show that any nontrivial account of these correlations in the form of an extension of quantum theory must violate parameter independence. Moreover, we analyze the violation of outcome independence of quantum mechanics and show that it is also a manifestation of nonlocality.
The problem of demonstrating entanglement is central to quantum information processing applications. Resorting to standard entanglement witnesses requires one to perfectly trust the implementation of the measurements to be performed on the entangled state, which may be an unjustified assumption. Inspired by the recent work of F. Buscemi [Phys. Rev. Lett. 108, 200401 (2012)], we introduce the concept of Measurement-Device-Independent Entanglement Witnesses (MDI-EWs), which allow one to demonstrate entanglement of all entangled quantum states with untrusted measurement apparatuses. We show how to systematically obtain such MDI-EWs from standard entanglement witnesses. Our construction leads to MDI-EWs that are loss-tolerant, and can be implemented with current technology.
A well-known manifestation of quantum entanglement is that it may lead to correlations that are inexplicable within the framework of a locally causal theory --- a fact that is demonstrated by the quantum violation of Bell inequalities. The precise relationship between quantum entanglement and the violation of Bell inequalities is, however, not well understood. While it is known that entanglement is necessary for such a violation, it is not clear whether all entangled states violate a Bell inequality, even in the scenario where one allows joint operations on multiple copies of the state and local filtering operations before the Bell experiment. In this paper we show that all entangled states, namely, all non-fully-separable states of arbitrary Hilbert space dimension and arbitrary number of parties, violate a Bell inequality when combined with another state which on its own cannot violate the same Bell inequality. This result shows that quantum entanglement and quantum nonlocality are in some sense equivalent, thus giving an affirmative answer to the aforementioned open question. It follows from our result that two entangled states that are apparently useless in demonstrating quantum nonlocality via a specific Bell inequality can be combined to give a Bell violation of the same inequality. Explicit examples of such activation phenomenon are provided.
We consider the problem of determining whether genuine multipartite entanglement was produced in an experiment, without relying on a characterization of the systems observed or of the measurements performed. We present an n-partite inequality that is satisfied by all correlations produced by measurements on biseparable quantum states, but which can be violated by n-partite entangled states, such as GHZ states. In contrast to traditional entanglement witnesses, the violation of this inequality implies that the state is not biseparable independently of the Hilbert space dimension and of the measured operators. Violation of this inequality does not imply, however, genuine multipartite non-locality. We show more generically how the problem of identifying genuine tripartite entanglement in a device-independent way can be addressed through semidefinite programming.
