Measurements of quantum systems can be used to generate classical data that is truly unpredictable for every observer. However, this true randomness needs to be discriminated from randomness due to ignorance or lack of control of the devices. We analyze the randomness gain of a measurement-device-independent setup, consisting of a well-characterized source of quantum states and a completely uncharacterized and untrusted detector. Our framework generalizes previous schemes as arbitrary input states and arbitrary measurements can be analyzed. Our method is used to suggest simple and realistic implementations that yield high randomness generation rates of more than one random bit per qubit for detectors of sufficient quality.
Randomness is a potential resource for cryptography, simulations and algorithms. Non-local correlations violating Bell's inequality certify the generation of bit strings whose randomness is guaranteed in a device-independent manner. We provide interesting semi-device independent randomness certification protocols by Kochen-Specker (KS) contextuality. For this, we first cast the Mermin's magic-square proof of KS contextuality for two-qubit system as a semi-device independent communication game in prepare-measure scenario. This provides a semi-device independent certification of two-bit of rando…
Randomness expansion where one generates a longer sequence of random numbers from a short one is viable in quantum mechanics but not allowed classically. Device-independent quantum randomness expansion provides a randomness resource of the highest security level. Here, we report the first experimental realization of device-independent quantum randomness expansion secure against quantum side information established through quantum probability estimation. We generate $5.47\times10^8$ quantum-proof random bits while consuming $4.39\times10^8$ bits of entropy, expanding our store of randomness by …
Nonlocal correlations are useful for device independent (DI) randomness certification [Nature (London) {\bf 464}, 1021 (2010)]. The advantage of this DI protocol over the conventional quantum protocol is that randomness can be certified even when experimental apparatuses are not trusted. Quantum entanglement is the necessary physical source for the nonlocal correlation required for such DI task. However, nonlocality and entanglement are distinct concepts. There exist entangled states which produce no nonlocal correlation and hence are not useful for the DI randomness certification task. Here w…
By proposing device-independent protocols, S. Pironio et al. [Nature 464, 1021-1024 (2010)] and R. Colbeck et al. [Nature Physics 8, 450-453 (2012)] proved that new randomness can be generated by using perfectly free random sources or partially free ones as seed. Subsequently, Li et al. [Phys. Rev. A 84, 034301 (2011)] studied this topic in the framework of semi-device-independent and proved that new randomness can be obtained from perfectly free random sources. Here we discuss whether and how partially free random sources bring us new randomness in semi-device-independent scenario. We propose…
Randomness amplification is the task of transforming a source of somewhat random bits into a source of fully random bits. Although it is impossible to amplify randomness from a single source by classical means, the situation is different considering non-local correlations allowed by quantum mechanics. Here we give the first device-independent protocol for randomness amplification using a constant number of devices. The protocol involves four devices, can amplify any non-deterministic source into a fully random source, tolerates a constant rate of error, and has its correctness based solely on …
We present a device-independent randomness expansion protocol, involving only a constant number of non-signaling quantum devices, that achieves \emph{infinite expansion}: starting with $m$ bits of uniform private randomness, the protocol can produce an unbounded amount of certified randomness that is $\exp(-Ω(m^{1/3}))$-close to uniform and secure against a quantum adversary. The only parameters which depend on the size of the input are the soundness of the protocol and the security of the output (both are inverse exponential in $m$). This settles a long-standing open problem in the area of ra…
We show that in device independent quantum key distribution protocols the privacy of randomness is of crucial importance. For sublinear test sample sizes even the slightest guessing probability by an eavesdropper will completely compromise security. We show that a combined attack exploiting test sample and measurement choices compromises the security even with a linear size test sample and otherwise device independent security considerations. We explicitly derive the sample size needed to retrieve security as a function of the randomness quality. We demonstrate that exploiting features of genu…
Expansion and amplification of weak randomness with untrusted quantum devices has recently become a very fruitful topic of research. Here we contribute with a procedure for amplifying a single weak random source using tri-partite GHZ-type entangled states. If the quality of the source reaches a fixed threshold $R=\frac{1}{4}\log_{2}(10)$, perfect random bits can be produced. This technique can be used to extract randomness from sources that can't be extracted neither classically, nor by existing procedures developed for Santha-Vazirani sources. Our protocol works with a single fault-free devic…
The concept of randomness plays an important role in many disciplines. On one hand, the question of whether random processes exist is fundamental for our understanding of nature. On the other hand, randomness is a resource for cryptography, algorithms and simulations. Standard methods for generating randomness rely on assumptions on the devices that are difficult to meet in practice. However, quantum technologies allow for new methods for generating certified randomness. These methods are known as device-independent because do not rely on any modeling of the devices. Here we review the efforts…
The rates at which a user can generate device-independent quantum random numbers from a Bell-type experiment depend on the measurements that he performs. By numerically optimising over these measurements, we present lower bounds on the randomness generation rates for a family of two-qubit states composed from a mixture of partially entangled states and the completely mixed state. We also report on the randomness generation rates from a tomographic measurement. Interestingly in this case, the randomness generation rates are not monotonic functions of entanglement.
Quantum theory allows for randomness generation in a device-independent setting, where no detailed description of the experimental device is required. Here we derive a general upper bound on the amount of randomness that can be generated in such a setting. Our bound applies to any black-box scenario, thus covering a wide range of scenarios from partially characterised to completely uncharacterised devices. Specifically, we prove that the number of random bits that can be generated is limited by the number of different input states that enter the measurement device. We show explicitly that our …
Device-independent protocols use nonlocality to certify that they are performing properly. This is achieved via Bell experiments on entangled quantum systems, which are kept isolated from one another during the measurements. However, with present-day technology, perfect isolation comes at the price of experimental complexity and extremely low data rates. Here we argue that for device-independent randomness generation -- and other device-independent protocols where the devices are in the same lab -- we can slightly relax the requirement of perfect isolation, and still retain most of the advanta…
We compare the power of quantum and classical physics in terms of randomness certification from devices which are only partially characterised. We study randomness certification based on state discrimination and take noncontextuality as the notion of classicality. A contextual advantage was recently shown to exist for state discrimination. Here, we develop quantum and noncontextual semi-device independent protocols for random-number generation based on maximum-confidence discrimination, which generalises unambiguous and minimum-error state discrimination. We show that, for quantum eavesdropppe…
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 fini…
Device-independent randomness generation and quantum key distribution protocols rely on a fundamental relation between the non-locality of quantum theory and its random character. This relation is usually expressed in terms of a trade-off between the probability of guessing correctly the outcomes of measurements performed on quantum systems and the amount of violation of a given Bell inequality. However, a more accurate assessment of the randomness produced in Bell experiments can be obtained if the value of several Bell expressions is simultaneously taken into account, or if the full set of p…
Expansion and amplification of weak randomness plays a crucial role in many security protocols. Using quantum devices, such procedure is possible even without trusting the devices used, by utilizing correlations between outcomes of parts of the devices. We show here how to extract random bits with an arbitrarily low bias from a single arbitrarily weak min-entropy source in a device independent setting. To do this we use Mermin devices that exhibit super-classical correlations. Number of devices used scales polynomially in the length of the random sequence $n$. Our protocol is robust, it can to…
We prove that as conjectured by Ac\'ın et al. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 040102(R) (2016)], two bits of randomness can be certified in a device-independent way from one bit of entanglement using the maximal quantum violation of Gisin's elegant Bell inequality. This suggests a surprising connection between maximal entanglement, complete sets of mutually unbiased bases, and elements of symmetric informationally complete positive operator-valued measures, on one side, and the optimal way of certifying maximal randomness, on the other.
Detection of entanglement in quantum networks consisting of many parties is one of the important steps towards building quantum communication and computation networks. We consider a scenario where the measurement devices used for this certification are uncharacterised. In this case, it is well known that by using quantum states as inputs for the measurement devices it is possible to detect any entangled state (a situation known as measurement device-independent entanglement witnessing). Here we go beyond entanglement detection and provide methods to estimate the amount of entanglement in a qua…
We demonstrate to what extent many copies of maximally entangled two-qubit states enable for generating a greater amount of certified randomness than that can be certified from a single copy. Although it appears that greater the dimension of the system implies a higher amount of randomness, the non-triviality lies in the device-independent simultaneous certification of generated randomness from many copies of entangled states. This is because, most of the two-outcome Bell inequalities (viz., Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt, Elegant, or Chain Bell inequality) are optimized for a single copy of two-q…
Applications of randomness such as private key generation and public randomness beacons require small blocks of certified random bits on demand. Device-independent quantum random number generators can produce such random bits, but existing quantum-proof protocols and loophole-free implementations suffer from high latency, requiring many hours to produce any random bits. We demonstrate device-independent quantum randomness generation from a loophole-free Bell test with a more efficient quantum-proof protocol, obtaining multiple blocks of $512$ bits with an average experiment time of less than $…
A device-independent randomness expansion protocol aims to take an initial random seed and generate a longer one without relying on details of how the devices operate for security. A large amount of work to date has focussed on a particular protocol based on spot-checking devices using the CHSH inequality. Here we show how to derive randomness expansion rates for a wide range of protocols, with security against a quantum adversary. Our technique uses semidefinite programming and a recent improvement of the entropy accumulation theorem. To support the work and facilitate its use, we provide cod…
Previous theoretical works showed that all pure two-qubit entangled states can generate one bit of local randomness and can be self-tested through the violation of proper Bell inequalities. We report an experiment in which nearly pure partially entangled states of photonic qubits are produced to investigate these tasks in a practical scenario. We show that small deviations from the ideal situation make low entangled states impractical to self-testing and randomness generation using the available techniques. Our results show that in practice lower entanglement implies lower randomness generatio…
While it has recently been demonstrated how to certify the maximal amount of randomness from any pure two-qubit entangled state in a device-independent way [E. Woodhead et al., Phys. Rev. Research 2, 042028(R)(2020)], the problem of optimal randomness certification from entangled states of higher local dimension remains open. Here we introduce a method for device-independent certification of the maximal possible amount of $2\log_23$ random bits using pure bipartite entangled two-qutrit states and extremal nine-outcome general non-projective measurements. To this aim, we exploit the extended Be…
Lund University(隆德大学);University of Jyväskylä(于韦斯屈莱大学);Technical University of Denmark(丹麦技术大学);Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)(韩国科学技术院)
The ability to produce random numbers that are unknown to any outside party is crucial for many applications. Device-independent randomness generation does not require trusted devices and therefore provides strong guarantees of the security of the output, but it comes at the price of requiring the violation of a Bell inequality for implementation. A further challenge is to make the bounds in the security proofs tight enough to allow randomness expansion with contemporary technology. Although randomness has been generated in recent experiments, the amount of randomness consumed in doing so has …
Randomness is an invaluable resource in today's life with a broad use reaching from numerical simulations through randomized algorithms to cryptography. However, on the classical level no true randomness is available and even the use of simple quantum devices in a prepare-measure setting suffers from lack of stability and controllability. This gave rise to a group of quantum protocols that provide randomness certified by classical statistical tests -- Device Independent Quantum Random Number Generators. In this paper we review the most relevant results in this field, which allow the production…
In this paper, we analyze several critical issues in semi-device independent quantum information processing protocol. In practical experimental realization randomness generation in that scenario is possible only if the efficiency of the detectors used is above a certain threshold. Our analysis shows that the critical detection efficiency is 0.7071 in the symmetric setup, while in the asymmetric setup if one of the bases has perfect critical detection efficiency then the other one can be arbitrarily close to 0. We also analyze the semi-device independent random number generation efficiency base…
In randomness amplification a slightly random source is used to produce an improved random source. Perhaps surprisingly, a single source of randomness cannot be amplified at all classically. However, the situation is different if one considers correlations allowed by quantum mechanics as an extra resource. Here we present a protocol that amplifies Santha-Vazirani sources arbitrarily close to deterministic into fully random sources. The protocol is device independent, depending only on the observed statistics of the devices and on the validity of the no-signaling principle between different dev…
How to generate genuine quantum randomness from untrusted devices is an important problem in quantum information processing. Inspired by previous work on a self-testing quantum random number generator [T. Lunghi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 150501 (2015)], we present a method to generate quantum randomness from a prepare-and-measure scenario with independent devices. In existing protocols, the quantum randomness depends only on a witness value (e.g., Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt value), which is calculated with the observed probabilities. Differently, here all the observed probabilities are dir…
Two parties sharing entangled quantum systems can generate correlations that cannot be produced using only shared classical resources. These nonlocal correlations are a fundamental feature of quantum theory but also have practical applications. For instance, they can be used for device-independent (DI) random number generation, whose security is certified independently of the operations performed inside the devices. The amount of certifiable randomness that can be generated from some given non-local correlations is a key quantity of interest. Here we derive tight analytic bounds on the maximum…
Device and semi-device independent quantum randomness generators (DI- and SDI-QRNGs) are crucial for applications requiring private randomness. However, they are vulnerable to detection inefficiency attacks and this limits severely their usage for practical purposes. Here, we present a method for protecting SDI-QRNGs in prepare-and-measure scenarios against detection inefficiency attacks. The key idea is the introduction of a blocking device that adds failures in the communication between the preparation and measurement devices. We prove that, for any detection efficiency, there is a blocking …
We introduce a protocol through which a pair of quantum mechanical devices may be used to generate n bits of true randomness from a seed of O(log n) uniform bits. The bits generated are certifiably random based only on a simple statistical test that can be performed by the user, and on the assumption that the devices obey the no-signaling principle. No other assumptions are placed on the devices' inner workings. A modified protocol uses a seed of O(log^3 n) uniformly random bits to generate $n$ bits of true randomness even conditioned on the state of a quantum adversary who may have had prior …
The majority of recent works investigating the link between non-locality and randomness, e.g. in the context of device-independent cryptography, do so with respect to some specific Bell inequality, usually the CHSH inequality. However, the joint probabilities characterizing the measurement outcomes of a Bell test are richer than just the degree of violation of a single Bell inequality. In this work we show how to take this extra information into account in a systematic manner in order to optimally evaluate the randomness that can be certified from non-local correlations. We further show that t…
The intrinsic random nature of quantum physics offers novel tools for the generation of random numbers, a central challenge for a plethora of fields. Bell non-local correlations obtained by measurements on entangled states allow for the generation of bit strings whose randomness is guaranteed in a device-independent manner, i.e. without assumptions on the measurement and state-generation devices. Here, we generate this strong form of certified randomness on a new platform: the so-called instrumental scenario, which is central to the field of causal inference. First, we theoretically show that …
The amount of intrinsic randomness that can be extracted from measurement on quantum systems depends on several factors: notably, the power given to the adversary and the level of characterization of the devices of the authorized partners. After presenting a systematic introduction to these notions, in this paper we work in the class of least adversarial power, which is relevant for assessing setups operated by trusted experimentalists, and compare three levels of characterization of the devices. Many recent studies have focused on the so-called "device-independent" level, in which a lower bou…
Randomness is an important resource for many applications, from gambling to secure communication. However, guaranteeing that the output from a candidate random source could not have been predicted by an outside party is a challenging task, and many supposedly random sources used today provide no such guarantee. Quantum solutions to this problem exist, for example a device which internally sends a photon through a beam-splitter and observes on which side it emerges, but, presently, such solutions require the user to trust the internal workings of the device. Here we seek to go beyond this limit…
Measurements on entangled quantum systems necessarily yield outcomes that are intrinsically unpredictable if they violate a Bell inequality. This property can be used to generate certified randomness in a device-independent way, i.e., without making detailed assumptions about the internal working of the quantum devices used to generate the random numbers. Furthermore these numbers are also private, i.e., they appear random not only to the user, but also to any adversary that might possess a perfect description of the devices. Since this process requires a small initial random seed, one usually…
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 …
Recently, a physically realistic protocol amplifying the randomness of Santha-Vazirani sources producing cryptographically secure random bits was proposed; however for reasons of practical relevance, the crucial question remained open whether this can be accomplished under the minimal conditions necessary for the task. Namely, is it possible to achieve randomness amplification using only two no-signaling components and in a situation where the violation of a Bell inequality only guarantees that some outcomes of the device for specific inputs exhibit randomness? Here, we solve this question and…
Recently, semi-device independent protocols have attracted increasing attention, guaranteeing security with few hypotheses and experimental simplicity. In this paper, we demonstrate a many-outcomes scheme with the binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) for a semi-device independent protocol based on the energy assumption. We show in theory that the number of certified random bits of the d-outcomes system outperforms the standard scheme (binary-outcomes). Furthermore, we compare the results of two well-known measurement schemes, homodyne and heterodyne detection. Lastly, taking into account the exper…
In quantum cryptography, device-independent (DI) protocols can be certified secure without requiring assumptions about the inner workings of the devices used to perform the protocol. In order to display nonlocality, which is an essential feature in DI protocols, the device must consist of at least two separate components sharing entanglement. This raises a fundamental question: how much entanglement is needed to run such DI protocols? We present a two-device protocol for DI random number generation (DIRNG) which produces approximately $n$ bits of randomness starting from $n$ pairs of arbitrari…
Quantum communication with systems of dimension larger than two provides advantages in information processing tasks. Examples include higher rates of key distribution and random number generation. The main disadvantage of using such multi-dimensional quantum systems is the increased complexity of the experimental setup. Here, we analyze a not-so-obvious problem: the relation between randomness certification and computational requirements of the postprocessing of experimental data. In particular, we consider semi-device independent randomness certification from an experiment using a four dimens…
We demonstrate that amplification of arbitrarily weak randomness is possible using quantum resources. We present a randomness amplification protocol that involves Bell experiments. We find a Bell inequality which can amplify arbitrarily weak randomness and give a detailed analysis of the protocol involving it. Our analysis includes finding a sufficient violation of Bell inequality as a function of the initial quality of randomness. It has a very important property that for any quality the required violation is strictly lower than possible to obtain using quantum resources. Among other things, …
It has been shown that the conditional probability distributions obtained by performing measurements on an uncharacterized physical system can be used to infer its underlying dimension in a device-independent way both in the classical and quantum setting. We analyze several aspects of the structure of the sets of probability distributions corresponding to a certain dimension taking into account whether shared randomness is available as a resource or not. We first consider the so-called prepare-and-measure scenario. We show that quantumness and shared randomness are not comparable resources. Th…
By performing local projective measurements on a two-qubit entangled state one can certify in a device-independent way up to one bit of randomness. We show here that general measurements, defined by positive-operator-valued measures, can certify up to two bits of randomness, which is the optimal amount of randomness that can be certified from an entangled bit. General measurements thus provide an advantage over projective ones for device-independent randomness certification.