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An Operational Environment for Quantum Self-Testing

Matthias Christandl, Nicholas Gauguin Houghton-Larsen, Laura Mancinska

Quantum 6, 699 (2022), 2021

Abstract

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…

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