arXiv subjects

Ravishankar Ramanathan

Publications and source records attributed to Ravishankar Ramanathan.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Finite Device-Independent Extraction of a Block Min-Entropy Source against Quantum Adversaries

The extraction of randomness from weakly random seeds is a problem of central importance with multiple applications. In the device-independent setting, this problem of quantum randomness amplification has been mainly restricted to specific weak sources of Santha-Vazirani type, while extraction from the general min-entropy sources has required a large number of separated devices which is impractical. In this paper, we present a device-independent protocol for amplification of a single min-entropy source (consisting of two blocks of sufficiently high min-entropy) using a device consisting of two spatially separated components and show a proof of its security against general quantum adversaries.

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arXiv2023

Optimal Measurement Structures for Contextuality Applications

The Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem is a corner-stone result in the foundations of quantum mechanics describing the fundamental difference between quantum theory and classical non-contextual theories. Recently specific substructures termed $01$-gadgets were shown to exist within KS proofs that capture the essential contradiction of the theorem. Here, we show these gadgets and their generalizations provide an optimal toolbox for contextuality applications including (i) constructing classical channels exhibiting entanglement-assisted advantage in zero-error communication, (ii) identifying large separations between quantum theory and binary generalised probabilistic theories, and (iii) finding optimal tests for contextuality-based semi-device-independent randomness generation. Furthermore, we introduce and study a generalisation to definite prediction sets for more general logical propositions, that we term higher-order gadgets. We pinpoint the role these higher-order gadgets play in KS proofs by identifying these as induced subgraphs within KS graphs and showing how to construct proofs of state-independent contextuality using higher-order gadgets as building blocks. The constructions developed here may help in solving some of the remaining open problems regarding minimal proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem.

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arXiv2022

Multipartite channel assemblages

Motivated by the recent studies on post-quantum steering, we generalize the notion of bipartite channel steering by introducing the concept of multipartite no-signaling channel assemblages. We first show that beyond the bipartite case, the no-signaling and quantum descriptions of channel assemblages do not coincide. Using the Choi-Jamiołkowski isomorphism, we present a complete characterization of these classes of assemblages and use this characterization to provide sufficient conditions for extremality of quantum channel assemblages within the set of all no-signaling channel assemblages. Finally, we introduce and discuss a relaxed version of channel steering where only certain subsystems obey the no-signaling constraints. In this latter asymmetric scenario we show the possibility of certifying a perfect key bit that is secure against a general no-signaling eavesdropper.

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arXiv2022

The rank of contextuality

Quantum contextuality is one of the most recognized resources in quantum communication and computing scenarios. We provide a new quantifier of this resource, the rank of contextuality (RC). We define RC as the minimum number of non-contextual behaviors that are needed to simulate a contextual behavior. We show that the logarithm of RC is a natural contextuality measure satisfying several properties considered in the spirit of the resource-theoretic approach. The properties include faithfulness, monotonicity, and additivity under tensor product. We also give examples of how to construct contextual behaviors with an arbitrary value of RC exhibiting a natural connection between this quantifier and the arboricity of an underlying hypergraph. We also discuss exemplary areas of research in which the new measure appears as a natural quantifier.

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arXiv2022

Single trusted qubit is necessary and sufficient for quantum realisation of extremal no-signaling correlations

Quantum statistics can be considered from the perspective of postquantum no-signaling theories in which either none or only a certain number of quantum systems are trusted. In these scenarios, the role of states is played by the so-called no-signaling boxes or no-signaling assemblages respectively. It has been shown so far that in the usual Bell non-locality scenario with a single measurement run, quantum statistics can never reproduce an extremal non-local point within the set of no-signaling boxes. We provide here a general no-go rule showing that the latter stays true even if arbitrary sequential measurements are allowed. On the other hand, we prove a positive result showing that already a single trusted qubit is enough for quantum theory to produce a self-testable extremal point within the corresponding set of no-signaling assemblages. This result opens up the possibility for security proofs of cryptographic protocols against general no-signaling adversaries.

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arXiv2022

Hybrid no-signaling-quantum correlations

Fundamental investigations in non-locality have shown that while the no-signaling principle alone is not sufficient to single out the set of quantum non-local correlations, local quantum mechanics and no-signaling together exactly reproduce the set of quantum correlations in the two-party Bell scenario. Here, we introduce and study an intermediate hybrid no-signaling quantum set of non-local correlations that we term $\textbf{HNSQ}$ in the multi-party Bell scenario where some subsystems are locally quantum while the remaining subsystems are only constrained by the no-signaling principle. Specifically, the set $\textbf{HNSQ}$ is a super-quantum set of correlations derived from no-signaling assemblages by performing quantum measurements on the trusted subsystems. As a tool for optimization over the set $\textbf{HNSQ}$, we introduce an outer hierarchy of semi-definite programming approximations to the set following an approach put forward by Doherty-Parillo-Spedalieri. We then show that in contrast to the set $\textbf{NS}$ of no-signaling correlations, there exist extreme points of $\textbf{HNSQ}$ in the tripartite Bell scenario that admit quantum realization. We perform an extensive numerical analysis of the maximal violation of the facet Bell inequalities in the three-party binary input-output scenario and study the corresponding self-testing properties. In contrast to the usual no-signaling correlations, the new set allows for simple security proofs of (one-sided)-device-independent applications against super-quantum adversaries.

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arXiv2021

No-signaling-proof randomness extraction from public weak sources

The extraction of randomness from weakly random seeds is a topic of central importance in cryptography. Weak sources of randomness can be considered to be either private or public, where public sources such as the NIST randomness beacon broadcast the random bits once they are generated. The problem of device-independent randomness extraction from weak public sources against no-signalling adversaries has remained open. In this paper, we show protocols for device-independent and one-sided device-independent amplification of randomness from weak public Santha Vazirani (SV) sources that use a finite number of devices and are secure against no-signaling adversaries. Specifically, under the assumption that the device behavior is as prescribed by quantum mechanics the protocols allow for amplification of public $ε$-SV sources for arbitrary initial $ε\in [0,0.5)$. On the other hand, when only the assumption of no-signaling between the components of the device is made, the protocols allow for amplification of a limited set of weak public SV sources.

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arXiv2021

Large violations in Kochen Specker contextuality and their applications

The Kochen-Specker (KS) theorem is a fundamental result in quantum foundations that has spawned massive interest since its inception. We present state-independent non-contextuality inequalities with large violations, in particular, we exploit a connection between Kochen-Specker proofs and pseudo-telepathy games to show KS proofs in Hilbert spaces of dimension $d \geq 2^{17}$ with the ratio of quantum value to classical bias being $O(\sqrt{d}/\log d)$. We study the properties of this KS set and show applications of the large violation. It has been recently shown that Kochen-Specker proofs always consist of substructures of state-dependent contextuality proofs called $01$-gadgets or bugs. We show a one-to-one connection between $01$-gadgets in $\mathbb{C}^d$ and Hardy paradoxes for the maximally entangled state in $\mathbb{C}^d \otimes \mathbb{C}^d$. We use this connection to construct large violation $01$-gadgets between arbitrary vectors in $\mathbb{C}^d$, as well as novel Hardy paradoxes for the maximally entangled state in $\mathbb{C}^d \otimes \mathbb{C}^d$, and give applications of these constructions. As a technical result, we show that the minimum dimension of the faithful orthogonal representation of a graph in $\mathbb{R}^d$ is not a graph monotone, a result that that may be of independent interest.

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arXiv2020

A No-go theorem for device-independent security in relativistic causal theories

A crucial task for secure communication networks is to determine the minimum of physical requirements to certify a cryptographic protocol. A widely accepted candidate for certification is the principle of relativistic causality which is equivalent to the disallowance of causal loops. Contrary to expectations, we demonstrate how correlations allowed by relativistic causality could be exploited to break security for a broad class of multi-party protocols (all modern protocols belong to this class). As we show, deep roots of this dramatic lack of security lies in the fact that unlike in previous (quantum or no-signaling) scenarios the new theory "decouples" the property of extremality and that of statistical independence on environment variables. Finally, we find out, that the lack of security is accompanied by some advantage: the new correlations can reduce communication complexity better than the no-signaling ones. As a tool for analysis of this advantage, we characterize relativistic causal polytope by its extremal points in the simplest multi-party scenario that goes beyond the no-signaling paradigm.

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arXiv2020

Practical No-Signalling proof Randomness Amplification using Hardy paradoxes and its experimental implementation

Device-Independent (DI) security is the best form of quantum cryptography, providing information-theoretic security based on the very laws of nature. In its highest form, security is guaranteed against adversaries limited only by the no-superluminal signalling rule of relativity. The task of randomness amplification, to generate secure fully uniform bits starting from weakly random seeds, is of both cryptographic and foundational interest, being important for the generation of cryptographically secure random numbers as well as bringing deep connections to the existence of free-will. DI no-signalling proof protocols for this fundamental task have thus far relied on esoteric proofs of non-locality termed pseudo-telepathy games, complicated multi-party setups or high-dimensional quantum systems, and have remained out of reach of experimental implementation. In this paper, we construct the first practically relevant no-signalling proof DI protocols for randomness amplification based on the simplest proofs of Bell non-locality and illustrate them with an experimental implementation in a quantum optical setup using polarised photons. Technically, we relate the problem to the vast field of Hardy paradoxes, without which it would be impossible to achieve amplification of arbitrarily weak sources in the simplest Bell non-locality scenario consisting of two parties choosing between two binary inputs. Furthermore, we identify a deep connection between proofs of the celebrated Kochen-Specker theorem and Hardy paradoxes that enables us to construct Hardy paradoxes with the non-zero probability taking any value in $(0,1]$. Our methods enable us, under the fair-sampling assumption of the experiment, to realize up to $25$ bits of randomness in $20$ hours of experimental data collection from an initial private source of randomness $0.1$ away from uniform.

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arXiv2020

Gadget structures in proofs of the Kochen-Specker theorem

The Kochen-Specker theorem is a fundamental result in quantum foundations that has spawned massive interest since its inception. We show that within every Kochen-Specker graph, there exist interesting subgraphs which we term $01$-gadgets, that capture the essential contradiction necessary to prove the Kochen-Specker theorem, i.e,. every Kochen-Specker graph contains a $01$-gadget and from every $01$-gadget one can construct a proof of the Kochen-Specker theorem. Moreover, we show that the $01$-gadgets form a fundamental primitive that can be used to formulate state-independent and state-dependent statistical Kochen-Specker arguments as well as to give simple constructive proofs of an "extended" Kochen-Specker theorem first considered by Pitowsky.

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arXiv2020

All two-party facet Bell inequalities are violated by Almost Quantum correlations

The characterization of the set of quantum correlations is a problem of fundamental importance in quantum information. The question whether every proper (tight) Bell inequality is violated in Quantum theory is an intriguing one in this regard. Here, we make significant progress in answering this question, by showing that every tight Bell inequality is violated by 'Almost Quantum' correlations, a semi-definite programming relaxation of the set of quantum correlations. As a consequence, we show that many (classes of) Bell inequalities including two-party correlation Bell inequalities and multi-outcome non-local computation games, that do not admit quantum violations, are not facets of the classical Bell polytope. To do this, we make use of the intriguing connections between Bell correlations and the graph-theoretic Lovász-theta set, discovered by Cabello-Severini-Winter (CSW). We also exploit connections between the cut polytope of graph theory and the classical correlation Bell polytope, to show that correlation Bell inequalities that define facets of the lower dimensional correlation polytope are violated in quantum theory. The methods also enable us to derive novel (almost) quantum Bell inequalities, which may be of independent interest for self-testing applications.

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arXiv2019

Quantum violations in the Instrumental scenario and their relations to the Bell scenario

The causal structure of any experiment implies restrictions on the observable correlations between measurement outcomes, which are different for experiments exploiting classical, quantum, or post-quantum resources. In the study of Bell nonlocality, these differences have been explored in great detail for more and more involved causal structures. Here, we go in the opposite direction and identify the simplest causal structure which exhibits a separation between classical, quantum, and post-quantum correlations. It arises in the so-called Instrumental scenario, known from classical causal models. We derive inequalities for this scenario and show that they are closely related to well-known Bell inequalities, such as the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality, which enables us to easily identify their classical, quantum, and post-quantum bounds as well as strategies violating the first two. The relations that we uncover imply that the quantum or post-quantum advantages witnessed by the violation of our Instrumental inequalities are not fundamentally different from those witnessed by the violations of standard inequalities in the usual Bell scenario. However, non-classical tests in the Instrumental scenario require fewer input choices than their Bell scenario counterpart, which may have potential implications for device-independent protocols.

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arXiv2018

Bell monogamy relations in arbitrary qubit networks

Characterizing trade-offs between simultaneous violations of multiple Bell inequalities in a large network of qubits is computationally demanding. We propose a graph-theoretic approach to efficiently produce Bell monogamy relations in arbitrary arrangements of qubits. All the relations obtained for bipartite Bell inequalities are tight and leverage only a single Bell monogamy relation. This feature is unique to bipartite Bell inequalities, as we show that there is no finite set of such elementary monogamy relations for multipartite inequalities. Nevertheless, many tight monogamy relations for multipartite inequalities can be obtained with our method as shown in explicit examples.

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arXiv2018

Amplifying the randomness of weak sources correlated with devices

The problem of device-independent randomness amplification against no-signaling adversaries has so far been studied under the assumption that the weak source of randomness is uncorrelated with the (quantum) devices used in the amplification procedure. In this work, we relax this assumption, and reconsider the original protocol of Colbeck and Renner using a Santha-Vazirani (SV) source. To do so, we introduce an SV-like condition for devices, namely that any string of SV source bits remains weakly random conditioned upon any other bit string from the same SV source and the outputs obtained when this further string is input into the devices. Assuming this condition, we show that a quantum device using a~singlet state to violate the chained Bell inequalities leads to full randomness in the asymptotic scenario of a large number of settings, for a restricted set of SV sources (with $0 \leq \varepsilon < (2^{(1/12)} - 1)/(2(2^{(1/12)} + 1)) \approx 0.0144$). We also study a device-independent protocol that allows for correlations between the sequence of boxes used in the protocol and the SV source bits used to choose the particular box from whose output the randomness is obtained. Assuming the SV-like condition for devices, we show that the honest parties can achieve amplification of the weak source, for the parameter range $0 \leq \varepsilon<0.0132$, against a class of attacks given as a mixture of product box sequences, made of extremal no-signaling boxes, with additional symmetry conditions. Composable security proof against this class of attacks is provided.

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arXiv2018

Steering is an essential feature of non-locality in quantum theory

A physical theory is called non-local when observers can produce instantaneous effects over distant systems. Non-local theories rely on two fundamental effects: local uncertainty relations and steering of physical states at a distance. In quantum mechanics, the former one dominates the other in a well-known class of non-local games known as XOR games. In particular, optimal quantum strategies for XOR games are completely determined by the uncertainty principle alone. This breakthrough result has yielded the fundamental open question whether optimal quantum strategies are always restricted by local uncertainty principles, with entanglement-based steering playing no role. In this work, we provide a negative answer to the question, showing that both steering and uncertainty relations play a fundamental role in determining optimal quantum strategies for non-local games. Our theoretical findings are supported by an experimental implementation with entangled photons.

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arXiv2017

Trade-offs in multi-party Bell inequality violations in qubit networks

Two overlapping bipartite binary input Bell inequalities cannot be simultaneously violated as this would contradict the usual no-signalling principle. This property is known as monogamy of Bell inequality violations and generally Bell monogamy relations refer to trade-offs between simultaneous violations of multiple inequalities. It turns out that multipartite Bell inequalities admit weaker forms of monogamies that allow for violations of a few inequalities at once. Here we systematically study monogamy relations between correlation Bell inequalities both within quantum theory and under the sole assumption of no signalling. We first investigate the trade-offs in Bell violations arising from the uncertainty relation for complementary binary observables, and exhibit several network configurations in which a tight trade-off arises in this fashion. We then derive a tight trade-off relation which cannot be obtained from the uncertainty relation showing that it does not capture monogamy entirely. The results are extended to Bell inequalities involving different number of parties and find applications in device-independent secret sharing and device-independent randomness extraction. Although two multipartite Bell inequalities may be violated simultaneously, we show that genuine multi-party non-locality, as evidenced by a generalised Svetlichny inequality, does exhibit monogamy property. Finally, using the relations derived we reveal the existence of flat regions in the set of quantum correlations.

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arXiv2017

Activation of monogamy in non-locality using local contextuality

A unified view on the phenomenon of monogamy exhibited by Bell inequalities and non-contextuality inequalities arising from the no-signaling and no-disturbance principles is presented using the graph-theoretic method introduced in \textit{Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 050404 (2012)}. We propose a novel type of trade-off, namely Bell inequalities that do not exhibit monogamy features of their own can be activated to be monogamous by the addition of a local contextuality term. This is illustrated by means of the well-known $\mathcal{I}_{3322}$ inequality, and reveals a resource trade-off between bipartite correlations and the local purity of a single system. In the derivation of novel no-signaling monogamies, we uncover a new feature, namely that two-party Bell expressions that are trivially classically saturated can become non-trivial upon the addition of an expression involving a third party with a single measurement input.

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