Multipartite Nonlocality Research Articles

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 that admit a fully local hidden variable model, i.e., where all parties are separated. Hence, although these states exhibit the strongest form of multipartite entanglement, they cannot lead to Bell inequality violation considering general nonsequential 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.

Experimental demonstration of genuine multipartite quantum nonlocality without shared reference frames

Multipartite quantum nonlocality is an important diagnostic tool and resource for both researches in fundamental quantum mechanics and applications in quantum information protocols. Shared reference frames among all parties are usually required for experimentally observing quantum nonlocality, which is not possible in many circumstances. Previous results have shown violations of bipartite Bell inequalities with approaching unit probability, without shared reference frames. Here we experimentally demonstrate genuine multipartite quantum nonlocality without shared reference frames, using the Svetlichny inequality. A significant violation probability of 0.58 is observed with a high-fidelity three-photon Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state. Furthermore, when there is one shared axis among all the parties, which is the usual case in fiber-optic or earth-satellite links, the experimental results demonstrate the genuine three-partite nonlocality with certainty. Our experiment will be helpful for applications in multipartite quantum communication protocols.

Nonlocality with ultracold atoms in a lattice

We sudy the creation of nonlocal states with ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. We show that these states violate Bell inequality by measuring one- and two-body correlations. Our scheme only requires beam splitting operations and global phase shifts, and can be realized within the current technology, employing single-site addressing. This proposal paves the way to study multipartite nonlocality and entanglement in ultracold atomic systems.

Connecting Quantum Contextuality and Genuine Multipartite Nonlocality with the Quantumness Witness**Supported by the National Basic Research Program of China under Grant No 2012CB921900, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos 11175089 and 11475089.

The Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt-type noncontextuality inequality and the Svetlichny inequality are derived from the Alicki-van Ryn quantumness witness. Thus connections between quantumness and quantum contextuality, and between quantumness and genuine multipartite nonlocality are established.

Entanglement and Nonlocality are Inequivalent for Any Number of Parties.

Understanding the relation between nonlocality and entanglement is one of the fundamental problems in quantum physics. In the bipartite case, it is known that these two phenomena are inequivalent, as there exist entangled states of two parties that do not violate any Bell inequality. However, except for a single example of an entangled three-qubit state that has a local model, almost nothing is known about such a relation in multipartite systems. We provide a general construction of genuinely multipartite entangled states that do not display genuinely multipartite nonlocality, thus proving that entanglement and nonlocality are inequivalent for any number of parties.

Demonstrating genuine multipartite entanglement and nonseparability without shared reference frames

Multipartite nonlocality is of great fundamental interest and constitutes a useful resource for many quantum information protocols. However, demonstrating it in practice, by violating a Bell inequality, can be difficult. In particular, standard experimental setups require the alignment of distant parties' reference frames, which can be challenging or impossible in practice. In this work we study the violation of certain Bell inequalities, namely the Mermin, Mermin-Klyshko and Svetlichny inequalities, without shared reference frames, when parties share a Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) state. Furthermore, we analyse how these violations demonstrate genuine multipartite features of entanglement and nonlocality. For 3, 4 and 5 parties, we show that it is possible to violate these inequalities with high probability, when the parties choose their measurements from the three Pauli operators, defined only with respect to their local frames. Moreover, the probability of violation, and the amount of violation, are increased when each party chooses their measurements from the four operators describing the vertices of a tetrahedron. We also consider how many randomly chosen measurement directions are needed to violate the Bell inequalities with high probability. We see that the obtained levels of violation are sufficient to also demonstrate genuine multipartite entanglement and nonseparability. Finally, we show analytically that choosing from two measurement settings per party is sufficient to demonstrate the maximum degree of genuine multipartite entanglement and nonseparability with certainty when the parties' reference frames are aligned in one direction so that they differ only in rotations around one axis.

Entropic Tests of Multipartite Nonlocality and State-Independent Contextuality.

We introduce a multipartite extension of an information-theoretic distance introduced by Zurek [Nature (London) 341, 119 (1989)]. We use it to develop a new tool for studying quantum correlations from an information-theoretic perspective. In particular, we derive entropic tests of multipartite nonlocality for three qubits and for an arbitrary even number of qubits as well as a test of state-independent contextuality. In addition, we rederive the tripartite Mermin inequality and a state-independent noncontextuality inequality by Cabello [Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 210401 (2008)]. This suggests that the information-theoretic distance approach to multipartite nonlocality and state-independent contextuality can provide a more general treatment of nonclassical correlations than the orthodox approach based on correlation functions.

Multipartite quantum nonlocality and Bell-type inequalities in an infinite-order quantum phase transition of the one-dimensional spin-1/2XXZchain

In this paper, combined with infinite time-evolving block decimation (iTEBD) algorithm and Bell-type inequalities, we investigate multi-partite quantum nonlocality in an infinite one-dimensional quantum spin-1/2 XXZ system. High hierarchy of multipartite nonlocality can be observed in the gapless phase of the model, meanwhile only the lowest hierarchy of multipartite nonlocality is observed in most regions of the gapped anti-ferromagnetic phase. Thereby, Bell-type inequalities disclose different correlation structures in the two phases of the system. Furthermore, at the infinite-order QPT (or Kosterlitz-Thouless QPT) point of the model, the correlation measures always show a local minimum value, regardless of the length of the subchains. It indicates that relatively low hierarchy of multi-partite nonlocality would be observed at the infinite-order QPT point in a Bell-type experiment. The result is in contrast to the existing results of the second-order QPT in the one-dimensional XY model, where multi-partite nonlocality with the hierarchy has been observed. Thus, multi-partite nonlocality provides us an alternative perspective to distinguish between these two kinds of QPTs. Reliable clues for the existence of tripartite quantum entanglement have also been found.

Multipartite nonlocality as a resource and quantum correlations having indefinite causal order

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 (Bancal et al 2013 Phys. Rev. A 88 014102) to the three- and four-partite scenarios 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 is investigated. As a byproduct, we obtain some new examples of device-independent witnesses for genuine four-partite entanglement, and also device-independent witnesses that allow one to infer the structure of the underlying multipartite entanglement.This article is part of a special issue of Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical devoted to ‘50 years of Bell's theorem’.

Anonymous quantum nonlocality.

We investigate the phenomenon of anonymous quantum nonlocality, which refers to the existence of multipartite quantum correlations that are not local in the sense of being Bell-inequality-violating but where the nonlocality is--due to its biseparability with respect to all bipartitions--seemingly nowhere to be found. Such correlations can be produced by the nonlocal collaboration involving definite subset(s) of parties but to an outsider, the identity of these nonlocally correlated parties is completely anonymous. For all n≥3, we present an example of an n-partite quantum correlation exhibiting anonymous nonlocality derived from the n-partite Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state. An explicit biseparable decomposition of these correlations is provided for any partitioning of the n parties into two groups. Two applications of these anonymous Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger 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.

Distillation of multipartite entanglement by local filtering operations

In this work, we study how to distill two typical multipartite entangled noisy states, the amplitude-damped W state and the amplitude-damped Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger state. Unlike the currently existing multipartite entanglement purification schemes, our scheme is a single-copy-based scheme, i.e., only one noisy state is needed in each distillation round, and the complicated multilateral controlled-not (cnot) operations are replaced by measurements of local positive-operator-valued measures (POVMs). The results show that local POVM measurements on one copy of the noisy state can project the initial state onto a new state with higher entanglement and nonlocality. In this scheme, although the final state can violate the multipartite Bell inequality, the corresponding initial noisy state does not violate it, which means that this distillation scheme can reveal the hidden genuine multipartite nonlocality of these initial states. For the case of the amplitude-damped W state, if the POVM parameters are appropriately chosen, the fidelity of the output state can approach $1.0$ for all the initial states with fidelity bigger than zero. So this single-copy-based multipartite entanglement distillation scheme has a wide range of distillable fidelities, and it is much simpler than the two-copy- or multiple-copy-based schemes. Furthermore, if the POVM measurement is carried out only on some member qubits rather than all of them, the distillation scheme can succeed too, which will greatly decrease the implementation complexity of the scheme. So this multipartite entanglement distillation scheme may be implementable in some physical system.

Test of genuine multipartite nonlocality without inequalities.

In this Letter we propose a set of conditions on the joint probabilities as a test of genuine multipartite nonlocality without inequality. Our test is failed by all nonsignaling local models in which even nonlocal correlations among some observables (not all) are allowed as long as these correlations respect the nonsignaling principle. A pass of our test by a state therefore indicates that this state cannot be simulated by any nonsignaling local models; i.e., the state exhibits genuine multipartite nonlocality. It turns out that all entangled symmetric n-qubit (n≥3) states pass our test and therefore are n-way nonlocal. Also we construct two Bell-type inequalities from our proposed test whose violations indicate genuine multipartite nonlocal correlations.

Characterization of quantum phase transition in theXYmodel with multipartite correlations and Bell-type inequalities

The ground state of interacting spin chains in external magnetic fields can undergo a quantum phase transition (QPT) characterized by dramatic changes at a critical value of the magnetic field. In this paper, we use Bell-type inequalities to study the multipartite correlations (including multipartite entanglement and multipartite nonlocality in an $n$-spin subsystem) in the QPT of an infinite $XY$ chain. An efficient numerical optimization procedure is proposed to figure out the violation measure ${M}_{n}$ of the inequalities. For $n\ensuremath{\le}7$, the magnetic-field ($\ensuremath{\lambda}$) dependence of ${M}_{n}$ is studied. We find the derivative of ${M}_{n}$ is divergent exactly at the QPT point ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{c}=1$ for any $n$. In addition, with the increase of $n$, ${M}_{n}$ converges quickly for $\ensuremath{\lambda}l{\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{c}$ and converges very slowly for $\ensuremath{\lambda}g{\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{c}$, which can be regarded as another signal for the QPT. Furthermore, in the vicinity of ${\ensuremath{\lambda}}_{c}$, high-order Bell-type inequalities will be violated as long as $n$ is large enough. This indicates that high-level multipartite correlation will be present when the system is in the vicinity of the QPT point. Nevertheless, genuine $n$-partite entanglement or genuine $n$-partite nonlocality is not observed in the QPT.

Theory of Genuine Tripartite Nonlocality of Gaussian States

We investigate the genuine multipartite nonlocality of three-mode Gaussian states of continuous variable systems. For pure states, we present a simplified procedure to obtain the maximum violation of the Svetlichny inequality based on displaced parity measurements, and we analyze its interplay with genuine tripartite entanglement measured via Rényi-2 entropy. The maximum Svetlichny violation admits tight upper and lower bounds at fixed tripartite entanglement. For mixed states, no violation is possible when the purity falls below 0.86. We also explore a set of recently derived weaker inequalities for three-way nonlocality, finding violations for all tested pure states. Our results provide a strong signature for the nonclassical and nonlocal nature of Gaussian states despite their positive Wigner function, and lead to precise recipes for its experimental verification.

Testing genuine tripartite quantum nonlocality with three two-level atoms in a driven cavity

It is known that the violation of Svetlichny's inequality (SI), rather than the usual Mermin's inequality (MI), is a robust criterion to confirm the existence of genuine multipartite quantum nonlocality. In this paper, we propose a feasible approach to test SI with three two-level atoms (TLAs) dispersively coupled to a driven cavity. The proposal is based on the joint measurements of the states of three TLAs by probing the steady-state transmission spectra of the driven cavity: each peak marks one of the computational basis states and its relative height corresponds to the probability superposed in the detected three-TLA state. With these kinds of joint measurements, the correlation functions in SI can be directly calculated, and thus the SI can be efficiently tested for typical tripartite entanglement, i.e., genuine tripartite entanglement [e.g., Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) and W states] and biseparable three-qubit entangled states (e.g., ${|\ensuremath{\chi}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{12}{|\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{3}$). Our numerical experiments show that the SI is violated only by three-qubit GHZ and W states, not by biseparable three-qubit entangled state ${|\ensuremath{\chi}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{12}{|\ensuremath{\xi}\ensuremath{\rangle}}_{3}$, while the MI can still be violated by biseparable three-qubit entangled states. Thus the violation of SI can be regarded as a robust criterion for the existence of genuine tripartite entanglement.

Enhanced multipartite quantum correlation by non-Gaussian operations

We study how conditional photon operations can affect multipartite quantum correlations, specifically nonlocality and entanglement, of the continuous-variable Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger (GHZ) states. We find that the violation of the Mermin-Klyshko inequality revealing the multipartite nonlocality can be made stronger with photon subtraction applied on each mode of the original GHZ states, particularly in a weak squeezing regime. Photon addition applied on local modes also turns out to enhance the degree of multipartite nonlocality in a broad range of parameters. We further investigate the effects of the photon operations on the degree of multipartite entanglement by looking into the Gaussian tangle, the fidelity of teleportation network, and the quadrature correlations. We find that photon subtraction applied on two modes enhances those entanglement characteristics in a practical squeezing regime while there is no improvement made by photon addition.

Demonstration of genuine multipartite entanglement with device-independent witnesses

Entanglement in a quantum system can be demonstrated experimentally by performing the measurements prescribed by an appropriate entanglement witness. However, the unavoidable mismatch between the implementation of measurements in practical devices and their precise theoretical modelling generally results in the undesired possibility of false-positive entanglement detection. Such scenarios can be avoided by using the recently developed device-independent entanglement witnesses (DIEWs) for genuine multipartite entanglement. Similarly to Bell inequalities, DIEWs only assume that consistent measurements are performed locally on each subsystem. No precise description of the measurement devices is required. Here we report an experimental test of DIEWs on up to six entangled 40Ca+ ions. We also demonstrate genuine multipartite quantum nonlocality between up to six parties with the detection loophole closed.

Multipartite Nonlocality in Ontological Models of Quantum Theory

Multipartite Nonlocality in Ontological Models of Quantum Theory

Testing genuine multipartite nonlocality in phase space

We demonstrate genuine three-mode nonlocality based on phase space formalism. A Svetlichny-type Bell inequality is formulated in terms of the $s$-parameterized quasiprobability function. We test such tool using exemplary forms of three-mode entangled states, identifying the ideal measurement settings required for each state. We thus verify the presence of genuine three-mode nonlocality that cannot be reproduced by local or nonlocal hidden variable models between any two out of three modes. In our results, GHZ- and W-type nonlocality can be fully discriminated. We also study the behavior of genuine tripartite nonlocality under the effects of detection inefficiency and dissipation induced by local thermal environments. Our formalism can be useful to test the sharing of genuine multipartite quantum correlations among the elements of some interesting physical settings, including arrays of trapped ions and intracavity ultracold atoms.

Tripartite entanglement-dependence of tripartite non-locality in non-inertial frames

The three-tangle-dependence of Smax = max 〈S〉, where S is a Svetlichny operator, is explicitly derived when one party moves with a uniform acceleration with respect to other parties in a generalized Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger and maximally slice states. The π-tangle-dependence of Smax is also derived implicitly. From this dependence, we conjecture that multipartite entanglement is not the only physical resource for quantum mechanical multipartite non-locality.