arXiv subjects

Flavien Hirsch

Publications and source records attributed to Flavien Hirsch.

17 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Bell Inequalities for Smells

In this work, we study a particular class of Bell inequalities involving only direct equality-comparisons of outcomes. This arises naturally when outcomes are difficult to characterize. For instance, if measurements yield smells, it may be impractical to process them individually, while still being reasonable to judge whether two smells are identical or not. In the bipartite case, the scenario can be interpreted as a natural generalization of full-correlator inequalities (XOR games) beyond binary outputs. We define the sub-polytope of the local polytope corresponding to this scenario and solve it for several bipartite and multipartite scenarios by leveraging some structural properties. In doing so, we obtain thousands of new tight inequalities, many of which are also facets of the standard local polytope. We also define unanimous Bell inequalities, a particular case of the previous class applied to the multipartite setting in which only full-equality events (all outcomes equal) are considered. We show that such inequalities can always be written as deterministic nonlocal games, and we give a simple multipartite unanimous family and prove its local bound. We show that most of these inequalities admit quantum violations, and we also display aspects of their importance for nonlocality. For instance, we identify examples where such inequalities can act as dimension witnesses, outcome witnesses, witnesses of genuine multipartite nonlocality, as well as being relevant to CHSH. These results show that these simple and elegant inequalities by themselves provide a powerful tool for discovering new Bell inequalities and device-independent witnesses.

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arXiv2025

Bell nonlocality with a single shot

In order to reject the local hidden variables hypothesis, the usefulness of a Bell inequality can be quantified by how small a p-value it will give for a physical experiment. Here we show that to obtain a small expected p-value it is sufficient to have a large gap between the local and Tsirelson bounds of the Bell inequality, when it is formulated as a nonlocal game. We develop an algorithm for transforming an arbitrary Bell inequality into an equivalent nonlocal game with the largest possible gap, and show its results for the CGLMP and $I_{nn22}$ inequalities. We present explicit examples of Bell inequalities with gap arbitrarily close to one, and show that this makes it possible to reject local hidden variables with arbitrarily small p-value in a single shot, without needing to collect statistics. We also develop an algorithm for calculating local bounds of general Bell inequalities which is significantly faster than the naïve approach, which may be of independent interest.

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arXiv2023

Device-independent and semi-device-independent entanglement certification in broadcast Bell scenarios

It has recently been shown that by broadcasting the subsystems of a bipartite quantum state, one can activate Bell nonlocality and significantly improve noise tolerance bounds for device-independent entanglement certification. In this work we strengthen these results and explore new aspects of this phenomenon. First, we prove new results related to the activation of Bell nonlocality. We construct Bell inequalities tailored to the broadcast scenario, and show how broadcasting can lead to even stronger notions of Bell nonlocality activation. In particular, we exploit these ideas to show that bipartite states admitting a local hidden-variable model for general measurements can lead to genuine tripartite nonlocal correlations. We then study device-independent entanglement certification in the broadcast scenario, and show through semidefinite programming techniques that device-independent entanglement certification is possible for the two-qubit Werner state in essentially the entire range of entanglement. Finally, we extend the concept of EPR steering to the broadcast scenario, and present novel examples of activation of the two-qubit isotropic state. Our results pave the way for broadcast-based device-dependent and semi-device-independent protocols.

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arXiv2021

Single-copy activation of Bell nonlocality via broadcasting of quantum states

Activation of Bell nonlocality refers to the phenomenon that some entangled mixed states that admit a local hidden variable model in the standard Bell scenario nevertheless reveal their nonlocal nature in more exotic measurement scenarios. We present such a scenario that involves broadcasting the local subsystems of a single-copy of a bipartite quantum state to multiple parties, and use the scenario to study the nonlocal properties of the two-qubit isotropic state: \begin{align} \nonumber ρ_α= α\,|Φ^+ \rangle\langle Φ^+|+(1-α)\frac{\mathbb{1}}{4}. \end{align} We present two main results, considering that Nature allows for (i) the most general no-signalling correlations, and (ii) the most general quantum correlations at the level of any hidden variable theory. We show that the state does not admit a local hidden variable description for $α>0.559$ and $α>\frac{1}{2}$, in cases (i) and (ii) respectively, which in both cases provides a device-independent certification of the entanglement of the state. These bounds are significantly lower than the previously best-known bound of $0.697$ for both Bell nonlocality and device-independent entanglement certification using a single copy of the state. Our results show that strong examples of non-classicality are possible with a small number of resources.

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arXiv2020

The Schmidt number of a quantum state cannot always be device-independently certified

One of the great challenges of quantum foundations and quantum information theory is the characterisation of the relationship between entanglement and the violation of Bell inequalities. It is well known that in specific scenarios these two can behave differently, from local hidden-variable models for entangled quantum states in restricted Bell scenarios, to maximal violations of Bell inequalities not concurring with maximal entanglement. In this paper we put forward a simple proof that there exist quantum states, whose entanglement content, as measured by the Schmidt number, cannot be device-independently certified for all possible sequential measurements on any number of copies. While the bigger question: \textit{can the presence of entanglement always be device-independently certified?} remains open, we provide proof that quantifying entanglement device-independently is not always possible, even beyond the standard Bell scenario.

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arXiv2019

Unbounded sequence of observers exhibiting Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering

A sequential steering scenario is investigated, where multiple Bobs aim at demonstrating steering using successively the same half of an entangled quantum state. With isotropic entangled states of local dimension $d$, the number of Bobs that can steer Alice is found to be $N_\mathrm{Bob}\sim d/\log{d}$, thus leading to an arbitrary large number of successive instances of steering with independently chosen and unbiased inputs. This scaling is achieved when considering a general class of measurements along orthonormal bases, as well as complete sets of mutually unbiased bases. Finally, we show that similar results can be obtained in an anonymous sequential scenario, where none of the Bobs know their position in the sequence.

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arXiv2018

Algorithmic construction of local models for entangled quantum states: optimization for two-qubit states

The correlations of certain entangled quantum states can be fully reproduced via a local model. We discuss in detail the practical implementation of an algorithm for constructing local models for entangled states, recently introduced by Hirsch et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 190402 (2016)] and Cavalcanti et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 190401 (2016)]. The method allows one to construct both local hidden state (LHS) and local hidden variable (LHV) models, and can be applied to arbitrary entangled states in principle. Here we develop an improved implementation of the algorithm, discussing the optimization of the free parameters. For the case of two-qubit states, we design a ready-to-use optimized procedure. This allows us to construct LHS models (for projective measurements) that are almost optimal, as we show for Bell diagonal states, for which the optimal model has recently been derived. Finally, we show how to construct fully analytical local models, based on the output of the convex optimization procedure.

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arXiv2018

Quantum measurement incompatibility does not imply Bell nonlocality

We discuss the connection between the incompatibility of quantum measurements, as captured by the notion of joint measurability, and the violation of Bell inequalities. Specifically, we present explicitly a given a set of non jointly measurable POVMs $\mathcal{M}_A$ with the following property. Considering a bipartite Bell test where Alice uses $\mathcal{M}_A$, then for any possible shared entangled state $ρ$ and any set of (possibly infinitely many) POVMs $\mathcal{N}_B$ performed by Bob, the resulting statistics admits a local model, and can thus never violate any Bell inequality. This shows that quantum measurement incompatibility does not imply Bell nonlocality in general.

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arXiv2017

Covariance Bell inequalities

We introduce Bell inequalities based on covariance, one of the most common measures of correlation. Explicit examples are discussed, and violations in quantum theory are demonstrated. A crucial feature of these covariance Bell inequalities is their nonlinearity; this has nontrivial consequences for the derivation of their local bound, which is not reached by deterministic local correlations. For our simplest inequality, we derive analytically tight bounds for both local and quantum correlations. An interesting application of covariance Bell inequalities is that they can act as "shared randomness witnesses": specifically, the value of the Bell expression gives device-independent lower bounds on both the dimension and the entropy of the shared random variable in a local model.

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arXiv2017

Better local hidden variable models for two-qubit Werner states and an upper bound on the Grothendieck constant $K_G(3)$

We consider the problem of reproducing the correlations obtained by arbitrary local projective measurements on the two-qubit Werner state $ρ= v |ψ_- > <ψ_- | + (1- v ) \frac{1}{4}$ via a local hidden variable (LHV) model, where $|ψ_- >$ denotes the singlet state. We show analytically that these correlations are local for $ v = 999\times689\times{10^{-6}}$ $\cos^4(π/50) \simeq 0.6829$. In turn, as this problem is closely related to a purely mathematical one formulated by Grothendieck, our result implies a new bound on the Grothendieck constant $K_G(3) \leq 1/v \simeq 1.4644$. We also present a LHV model for reproducing the statistics of arbitrary POVMs on the Werner state for $v \simeq 0.4553$. The techniques we develop can be adapted to construct LHV models for other entangled states, as well as bounding other Grothendieck constants.

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arXiv2016

Entanglement without hidden nonlocality

We consider Bell tests in which the distant observers can perform local filtering before testing a Bell inequality. Notably, in this setup, certain entangled states admitting a local hidden variable model in the standard Bell scenario can nevertheless violate a Bell inequality after filtering, displaying so-called hidden nonlocality. Here we ask whether all entangled states can violate a Bell inequality after well-chosen local filtering. We answer this question in the negative by showing that there exist entangled states without hidden nonlocality. Specifically, we prove that some two-qubit Werner states still admit a local hidden variable model after any possible local filtering on a single copy of the state.

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arXiv2016

Algorithmic construction of local hidden variable models for entangled quantum states

Constructing local hidden variable (LHV) models for entangled quantum states is challenging, as the model should reproduce quantum predictions for all possible local measurements. Here we present a simple method for building LHV models, applicable to general entangled states, which consists in verifying that the statistics resulting from a finite set of measurements is local, a much simpler problem. This leads to a sequence of tests which, in the limit, fully capture the set of quantum states admitting a LHV model. Similar methods are developed for constructing local hidden state models. We illustrate the practical relevance of these methods with several examples, and discuss further applications.

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arXiv2016

Incompatible quantum measurements admitting a local hidden variable model

The observation of quantum nonlocality, i.e. quantum correlations violating a Bell inequality, implies the use of incompatible local quantum measurements. Here we consider the converse question. That is, can any set of incompatible measurements be used in order to demonstrate Bell inequality violation? Our main result is to construct a local hidden variable model for an incompatible set of qubit measurements. Specifically, we show that if Alice uses this set of measurements, then for any possible shared entangled state, and any possible dichotomic measurements performed by Bob, the resulting statistics are local. This represents significant progress towards proving that measurement incompatibility does not imply Bell nonlocality in general.

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arXiv2016

Sufficient criterion for guaranteeing that a two-qubit state is unsteerable

Quantum steering can be detected via the violation of steering inequalities, which provide sufficient conditions for the steerability of quantum states. Here we discuss the converse problem, namely ensuring that a state is unsteerable, and hence Bell local. We present a simple criterion, applicable to any two-qubit state, which guarantees that the state admits a local hidden state model for arbitrary projective measurements. We find new classes of unsteerable entangled states, which can thus not violate any steering or Bell inequality. In turn, this leads to sufficient conditions for a state to be only one-way steerable, and provides the simplest possible example of one-way steering. Finally, by exploiting the connection between steering and measurement incompatibility, we give a sufficient criterion for a continuous set of qubit measurements to be jointly measurable.

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arXiv2015

Local hidden variable models for entangled quantum states using finite shared randomness

The statistics of local measurements performed on certain entangled states can be reproduced using a local hidden variable (LHV) model. While all known models make use of an infinite amount of shared randomness---the physical relevance of which is questionable---we show that essentially all entangled states admitting a LHV model can be simulated with finite shared randomness. Our most economical model simulates noisy two-qubit Werner states using only 3.58 bits of shared randomness. We also discuss the case of POVMs, and the simulation of nonlocal states with finite shared randomness and finite communication. Our work represents a first step towards quantifying the cost of LHV models for entangled quantum states.

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arXiv2015

Genuinely multipartite entangled quantum states with fully local hidden variable models and hidden multipartite nonlocality

The relation between entanglement and nonlocality is discussed in the case of multipartite quantum systems. We show that, for any number of parties, there exist genuinely multipartite entangled states which admit a fully local hidden variable model, i.e. where all parties are separated. Hence, although these states are entangled in the strongest possible sense, they cannot lead to Bell inequality violation considering general non-sequential local measurements. Then, we show that the nonlocality of these states can nevertheless be activated using sequences of local measurements, thus revealing genuine multipartite hidden nonlocality.

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arXiv2013

Genuine hidden quantum nonlocality

The nonlocality of certain quantum states can be revealed by using local filters before performing a standard Bell test. This phenomenon, known as hidden nonlocality, has been so far demonstrated only for a restricted class of measurements, namely projective measurements. Here we prove the existence of genuine hidden nonlocality. Specifically, we present a class of two-qubit entangled states, for which we construct a local model for the most general local measurements (POVMs), and show that the states violate a Bell inequality after local filtering. Hence there exist entangled states, the nonlocality of which can be revealed only by using a sequence of measurements. Finally, we show that genuine hidden nonlocality can be maximal. There exist entangled states for which a sequence of measurements can lead to maximal violation of a Bell inequality, while the statistics of non-sequential measurements is always local.

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