Photonic Multipartite Entanglement

Photonic multipartite
entanglement
Generation, measurement and applications
Massimiliano Smania
Doctoral Thesis in Physics at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020

Photonic multipartite entanglement
Massimiliano Smania
Academic dissertation for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics at Stockholm
University to be publicly defended on Thursday 10 September 2020 at 09.00 in FB41, AlbaNova
universitetscentrum, Roslagstullsbacken 21, digitally via conference (Zoom), public link https://
stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/s/239996391.
Abstract
We are currently witnessing a fundamental change in the field of quantum information, whereby protocols and experiments
previously performed in university labs are now being implemented in real-world scenarios, and a strong commercial push
for new and reliable applications is contributing significantly in advancing fundamental research. In this thesis and related
included papers, I first look at a keystone of quantum science, Bell's theorem. In particular, I will expose an issue that
we call apparent signalling, which affects many current and past experiments relying on Bell tests. A statistical test of
the impact of apparent signalling is described, together with experimental approaches to successfully mitigate it. Next, I
consider one of the most refined ideas that recently emerged in quantum information, device-independent certification.
Device-independent quantum information aims at answering the question: "Assuming we trust quantum mechanics, what
can we conclude about the quantum systems or the measurement operators in a given experiment, based solely on its results,
while making minimal assumptions on the physical devices used?". In my work, the problem was successfully approached
in two different scenarios, one based on entangled photons and the other on prepare-and-measure experiments with single
photons, with the aim of certifying informationally-complete quantum measurements. Finally, I conclude by presenting
an elegant and promising approach to the experimental generation of multi-photon entanglement, which is a fundamental
prerequisite in most modern quantum information protocols.
Keywords: quantum information, entanglement, Bell tests, POVM, device-independent, self-testing, quantum optics,
prepare-and-measure.
Stockholm 2020
http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-182523
ISBN 978-91-7911-030-7
ISBN 978-91-7911-031-4
Department of Physics
Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm
PHOTONIC MULTIPARTITE ENTANGLEMENT
Massimiliano Smania
Photonic multipartite
entanglement
Massimiliano Smania
©Massimiliano Smania, Stockholm University 2020
ISBN print 978-91-7911-030-7

ISBN PDF 978-91-7911-031-4
Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics

Department of Physics, Stockholm University, Sweden.
©Paper II: 2020 Optical Society of America.

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Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020
Distributor: Department of Physics, Stockholm University

To my parents.
Ai miei genitori.
Abstract
We are currently witnessing a fundamental change in the field of quantum

information, whereby protocols and experiments previously performed in
university labs are now being implemented in real-world scenarios, and a
strong commercial push for new and reliable applications is contributing
significantly in advancing fundamental research. In this thesis and related
included papers, I first look at a keystone of quantum science, Bell’s theo-
rem. In particular, I will expose an issue that we call apparent signalling,
which affects many current and past experiments relying on Bell tests. A
statistical test of the impact of apparent signalling is described, together
with experimental approaches to successfully mitigate it. Next, I consider
one of the most refined ideas that recently emerged in quantum information,
device-independent certification. Device-independent quantum information
aims at answering the question: “Assuming we trust quantum mechanics,
what can we conclude about the quantum systems or the measurement op-
erators in a given experiment, based solely on its results, while making min-
imal assumptions on the physical devices used?”. In my work, the problem
was successfully approached in two different scenarios, one based on entan-
gled photons and the other on prepare-and-measure experiments with sin-
gle photons, with the aim of certifying informationally-complete quantum
measurements. Finally, I conclude by presenting an elegant and promis-
ing approach to the experimental generation of multi-photon entanglement,
which is a fundamental prerequisite in most modern quantum information
protocols.
v
vi
Acknowledgements
It is not a coincidence that most acknowledgement sections in dissertations

begin with the doctoral supervisor. My PhD would not have been possible
without the scientific, moral and financial support of Mohamed Bouren-
nane. I especially thank you for all our never-ending discussions on the
most diverse topics, which, besides keeping me from supper, have in time
come to constitute the foundations of some of the skills I have developed
outside of the scientific realm in the past few years.
I also thank my co-supervisor Markus Hennrich, for always being knowl-
edgeable and clear whenever explaining complex quantum optics concepts
to me, and Per-Erik Tegner for his guidance and help as a doctoral mentor.
Ingemar Bengtsson, your generosity and dedication in helping students are
lights in the sometimes dark corridors of Academia, and have proven useful
multiple times in my path.
Five years are a rather long time in academic terms, which is why I had
the chance to meet and collaborate with several researchers without whom
this work would have never reached a satisfactory end. Among them, I
would like to thank Ashraf, Sadiq, Hammad and Nawareg, who shared with
me countless hours of work and discussion inside and outside the lab. I
am also grateful to my co-authors Adán, Matthias, Piotr and Armin. There
would be no papers in this thesis without you.
My experience in research so far has also been invaluably enhanced by
the strong sense of community I felt in my everyday work, especially among
fellow students. I thank Marco, Alley, Walid, Natalie, Alban, Alexander,
Gerard, Fabian, Irina, Pil, and each and every person in the KIKO group.
My time in Albanova would have been miserable without all of you.
Unlike my Masters thesis, these acknowledgements will be part of the
final printed version, thus I have to resist switching to more emotional
southern languages. Ornella and Franco, although I have never had the
chance to try other parents, I am absolutely and scientifically certain that
you are the best in the world. You and my brother are the ground I walk
on and the sky I look up to. Thank you. Nicola, thank you also for the
ever-too-brief times spent together in these few years. The distance that
separates us is but a number, and if this goes to plan, I will soon achieve
total control over numbers. This section of my acknowledgements would
vii
not be complete without the latest addition to my family: Vani, the efforts
and sacrifices you made so I could reach this goal are what made it worth
in the first place. Thank you for taking care of me as if your life depended
on it, your attention is what kept me going.
Karin and Paolo, thank you for being the best friends to live next to in
a pandemic, and so much more. Actually, thank you Karin for the Sam-
manfattning too, for giving me a place to sleep, for covering my rent when
I could not pay, for sharing apartments with me throughout my PhD, and
additional crucial help which would need a separate section just to list.
Thank you Andrea for exchanging doubts on our aptitude as researchers,
and for long and intricate discussions on all of the big themes in the world.
Both made us stronger. I am also grateful to all the friends that have made
my time outside Albanova so much fun, in particular the Desert Island team
and the ever-expanding Italian club.
Sincere thanks also to all the friends who, although not in Stockholm,
played a fundamental role during the time of my PhD studies anyway. In
particular, I would like to thank Davide, Luca, Alice, Ale, Ale, Degia, Joey,
Danel and Tri. Your friendship has time and again proven stronger than the
distance that divides us.
Last but not least, the research work carried out in this thesis was funded
by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the Swedish Research
Council.
viii
Contents
Abstract v
Acknowledgements vii
List of Papers xii
Author’s contribution xiii
Relevant papers not included in the thesis xiv
List of Figures xv
List of Tables xvii
Sammanfattning xviii
Preface xix
1 Bits of quantum information 1

1.1 The qubit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Multi-qubit systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Mixed states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Quantum measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4.1 Projective measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4.2 Generalised measurements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4.3 SIC-POVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4.4 Trine-POVM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.5 Quantum state fidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6 Entanglement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.6.1 Entanglement witness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.7 Bell states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
ix
2 Bell tests 13
2.1 The EPR paradox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Bell’s theorem and the CHSH inequality . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.3 Loopholes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.4 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3 Experimental background 21
3.1 Single photon polarisation as a qubit . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 The main actors in polarisation manipulation . . . . . . . 22
3.2.1 Wave-plates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.2.2 Polarisers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.2.3 (Polarising) beam-splitters . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2.4 Polarisation-dependent filter . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Polarisation qubit state preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.4 State analysis and detection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
4 Signalling 31
4.1 A definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.1.1 A mathematical definition . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.2 Some key motivations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4.3 Experimental sources of signalling . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.3.1 Solutions and results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4.4 Concerning common assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.5 Additional experimental work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4.5.1 State characterisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.5.2 Wave-plate motor hysteresis . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.5.3 Laser power stability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5 Certifying a generalised quantum measurement 41

5.1 Device independent quantum information . . . . . . . . . 42
5.2 Two ways to certify a generalised quantum measurement . 42
5.3 Entanglement-based certification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
5.3.1 Summary of results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.3.2 Experimental assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.4 Prepare-and-measure certification . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.4.1 Summary of results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
5.4.2 Experimental assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6 Multi-photon entanglement source 51

6.1 Spontaneous-parametric down-conversion: a qubit source . 52
6.1.1 Pump . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
6.1.2 Polarisation-entangled pair source . . . . . . . . . 54
x
6.2 Scaling up to GHZ states . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.3 General setup characterisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
6.3.1 Source brightness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
6.3.2 Source fidelity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
6.4 Characterisation of individual sources . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.4.1 2-photon sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.4.2 4-photon sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.4.3 6-photon source – γ 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.5 Comparison with literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6.5.1 Future outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
7 Summary and outlook 77
References 79
xi
List of Papers
The following papers, referred to in the text by their Roman numerals, are
included in this thesis.
PAPER I: Avoiding apparent signaling in Bell tests for applications

Massimiliano Smania, Matthias Kleinmann, Adán Cabello,
Mohamed Bourennane Arxiv, 1801.05739 (2018) – Not the
latest version, see attached paper.
DOI: https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.05739
PAPER II: Experimental certification of an informationally complete

quantum measurement in a device-independent protocol
Massimiliano Smania, Piotr Mironowicz, Mohamed Nawareg,
Marcin Pawłowski, Adán Cabello, Mohamed Bourennane Op-
tica, 7, pp. 123-128 (2020).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1364/OPTICA.377959
PAPER III: Self-testing nonprojective quantum measurements in pre-

pare-and-measure experiments
Armin Tavakoli, Massimiliano Smania, Tamás Vértesi, Nico-
las Brunner, Mohamed Bourennane Science Advances, vol. 6
no. 16 (2020).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaw6664
PAPER IV: Experimental observation of photonic multipartite entan-

glement
Hammad Anwer, Muhammad Sadiq, Massimiliano Smania,
Mohamed Bourennane – In preparation.
Reprints were made with permission from the publishers.
xii
Author’s contribution
PAPER I: I designed the experimental setup, built it, and performed the
measurements. I carried out a relevant part of the data anal-
ysis and participated in theoretical discussions. I contributed
to writing the paper.
PAPER II: I and M. Nawareg designed and built the experimental setup.
I performed all the measurements independently, except for
the full state tomography, which I did with M. Nawareg. I
carried out the data analysis and participated in developing
the theoretical background. I contributed to writing the paper.
PAPER III: I designed and built the experimental setup. I performed the
measurements and their analysis. I participated in discus-
sions of the theoretical ideas in the paper, and I contributed
in writing the experimental sections.
PAPER IV: M. Sadiq, M. Nawareg and M. Bourennane designed the ex-

perimental setup. M. Sadiq, M. Nawareg, H. Anwer and I
built the experimental setup. M. Sadiq, H. Anwer and I per-
formed the experiments reported in Chapter 6. I carried out
the data analysis for the results reported in the same chapter.
All authors are contributing to writing the paper.
xiii
Relevant papers not included in the
thesis
Experimental quantum multiparty communication protocols

Massimiliano Smania, Ashraf Mohamed El Hassan, Armin Tavakoli,
Mohamed Bourennane npj Quantum Information, 2, 16010 (2016).
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/npjqi.2016.10
xiv
List of Figures
1.1 A vector on a Bloch sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

1.2 Eigenstates of Pauli matrices on the Bloch sphere . . . . . 3
1.3 SIC-POVM and Trine-POVM projectors on the Bloch sphere. 9
3.1 A beam-splitter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.2 Polarisation-dependent filter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Single qubit state preparation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.4 A measurement station for single photon polarisation qubits. 28
4.1 Simulated CHSH result for equal and very unequal overall
efficiencies. Reported from Paper I. . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
4.2 Example of experimental data showing high apparent sig-
nalling. Reported from Paper I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.3 Test of wave-plate motor hysteresis. . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.4 Test of power stability of pump laser. . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
6.1 Simple scheme of pump light preparation. . . . . . . . . . 54

6.2 Depiction of the entangled photon source. . . . . . . . . . 54
6.3 Down-converted photons as photographed by a single-photon
camera. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
6.4 Spectrum of down-converted photons, before and after spec-
tral filtering. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
6.5 Gold-coated ten-facet mirror to split SPDC rings. . . . . . 57
6.6 Entanglement of independent photons. . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.7 Multi-photon entanglement source - experimental setup. . 59
6.8 RP against pump power, with linear fit. . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.9 Singles, 2- and 4-photon generation rates against pump power. 62
6.10 4-, 6- and 8-photon rates as function of 2-photon coincidences. 63
6.11 |φ + i visibility as function of pump power and collection
efficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.12 The Hong-Ou-Mandel effect in our source. . . . . . . . . . 68
xv
6.13 A measure of photon indistinguishability as function of pump
power. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.14 Experimental quantum state tomography of 2-qubits. . . . 70
6.15 Experimental quantum state tomography of 4-qubits. . . . 71
6.16 Experimental results of measurement of operators in Eq.
(6.11). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.17 Experimental results of measurement of operators in Eq.
(6.12). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.18 Expected 8-photon rates as function of pump power and
collection efficiency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
xvi
List of Tables
1.1 Pauli operators and their eigenstates, labelled with light po-
larisation directions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1 Wave-plate angle settings are reported for Pauli measure-

ment operators, together with the PBS outputs associated to
each projector. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
5.1 Comparison of the main features of the entanglement-based

and prepare-and-measure certification approaches. Pros and
cons are coloured in green and red respectively. . . . . . . 44
6.1 List of multi-photon entanglement sources found in the setup

in Fig. 6.7. In the source name, the superscript represents
the number of photons involved, while the subscript helps to
distinguish between sources with the same number of photons. 58
6.2 Experimental visibility in σz and σx bases for the 2-photon
sources in the setup. The different uncertainties are mainly
due to different measurement duration. . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.3 Comparison of the performance of the multi-photon entan-
glement source reported in this work with the state-of-the-
art experiments found in literature, and a previous source
built in our lab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
xvii
Sammanfattning
Vi bevittnar numera en grundläggande förändring inom kvantinformations-

fältet: protokoll och experiment som tidigare utfördes i universitetslabora-
torier genomförs nu i verkliga scenarier. Dessutom bidrar en stark kommer-
siell satsning på nya och tillförlitliga tillämpningar avsevärt till att främja
grundforskningen. I denna avhandling och tillhörande bifogade artiklar,
betraktar jag först en grundpelare inom kvantvetenskapen: Bells sats. I
synnerhet kommer jag att uppenbara ett problem som vi kallar “appar-
ent signalling” - skenbar signalering. Detta problem påverkar många nu-
varande och tidigare experiment som bygger på Bell-tester. Det beskrivs ett
statistiskt test av skenbar signalering, samt experimentella metoder för att
framgångsrikt förmildra dem. Därefter betraktar jag en av de mest inno-
vativa idéer som nyligen framkommit inom kvantinformationen: “device-
independent certification” - enhetsoberoende certifiering. Enhetsoberoende
kvantinformation syftar till att besvara frågan: “Förutsatt att vi litar på
kvantmekanik, vilka slutsatser kan vi dra gällande kvantsystemen eller mä-
toperatörerna i ett visst experiment, baserat enbart på dess resultat, sam-
tidigt som att det framställs minimala antaganden om de fysiska enheter
som används?”. I mitt arbete är problemet framgångsrikt betraktat i två
olika scenarier, den ena baserad på sammanflätade fotoner och den andra
på förbered-och-mät enstaka fotoner, i syfte att försäkra informativt kom-
pletta kvantmätningar. Slutligen avslutar jag med att presentera en elegant
och lovande inställning till den experimentella alstring av multifotonsam-
manflätning, vilket är en grundläggande förutsättning i de flesta moderna
kvantinformationsprotokoll.
xviii
Preface
One evening around halfway through my PhD studies, I found myself demon-
strating a Bell test experiment to a group of rather enthusiastic students as
part of a modern physics course. The course was included in a general
physics program, which skimmed over theorems and equations in favour of
the more popular aspects of the discipline. After going through the optics
included in the experimental setup, I quickly performed the few measure-
ments required for the estimation of the final result. Result which, I an-
nounced in darkness, turned out to be safely beyond the boundary of clas-
sical physics, which I had previously explained on the whiteboard. A few
hands popped up, and I swiftly dispensed equation-free, dogmatic answers
to the apparent satisfaction of the class. That was, until one perplexed-
looking student asked: “What is entanglement?”. Realising that the stan-
dard definition would require knowledge of at least quantum superposition
and state separability, I scrambled for an answer which the students could
cope with. I went with the all-time favourite: two identical objects are of
two colours at the same time, and when we check the colour of one of them,
they both immediately turn the same colour, no matter how far apart they
are. The class was not satisfied. They pointed out there is nothing wrong
with the objects being one of two colours from the beginning, and no weird
instantaneous influence is required to explain why they always turn out of
the same colour. That was correct of course, but I could not possibly say
“that is the difference between a mixed quantum state and entanglement”,
could I? Unable to find a better answer, I resorted to playing the card of dog-
matic knowledge once again, and simply said that if the students’ remark
were true, our little experiment would not have violated Bell’s inequality,
and that more knowledge was of course required to really understand the
definition of entanglement.
Unsurprisingly perhaps, there really is no way to explain the concept
of entanglement without invoking some of the features which are unique to
quantum mechanics. Although the consequences of entanglement used to
puzzle some of the best minds of the previous century [1], they are now ac-
cepted and mostly understood by the scientific community. In recent years,
quantum information has been transitioning from books and labs to cata-
logues and (online) shops, by means of multi-national public and private ef-
xix
forts. While the industry shows a growing interest in investing in quantum
information and its applications, researchers are sharpening their existing
tools and exploring new paradigms in view of real-world implementations.
In this context, my PhD work aimed at both refining current experi-
mental approaches to quantum information applications, and probing some
of the more recent ideas emerging in the field. After a brief introduction
of some fundamental theoretical concepts in Chapters 1 and 2, I will dis-
cuss in the present thesis how such theoretical concepts were translated into
experiment in Chapter 3. Chapter 4 will report on how, in Paper I, we ex-
posed and characterised a potential issue common to some of the best Bell
experiments found in literature. On the other hand, in Paper II and III,
we explored the recent concept of device-independent quantum informa-
tion in relation to a type of measurement rather unusual in quantum optics,
that is, non-projective measurements. The different approaches to the prob-
lem of device-independent certification taken in the two papers are outlined
in Chapter 5. However, none of the work in the mentioned papers could
be carried out without the development and characterisation of a source of
entangled photons. Our novel approach on multi-photon entanglement gen-
eration is what took most of my time and efforts during my PhD and, since
not yet published, it is reported in details in Chapter 6. The results will
constitute part of Paper IV, which is currently in preparation.
The three introductory chapters are built upon my licentiate thesis, which
was defended on December 20, 2018, half-way through my PhD studies.
Among the papers discussed here, Paper I was included in that disserta-
tion, although in the form of a previous version. As a consequence, Chapter
4 too is partially taken from my licentiate thesis. More in detail, the contri-
butions from my previous dissertation are as follows:
Chapter 1 : Sections 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, the first part of 1.6, and 1.7 were present
in the licentiate thesis. They have been limitedly extended.
Chapter 2 was present in the licentiate thesis. It has been reviewed and
corrected where needed.
Chapter 3 was present in the licentiate thesis, except for Section 3.2.4.
Section 3.4 has been extended.
Chapter 4 : Sections 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 and 4.5 were present in my licentiate
thesis. They have been significantly reworked and extended.
Chapter 6 : Section 6.1 was present in my licentiate thesis. It has been
reviewed and limitedly extended.
All the remaining parts are new.
xx
1. Bits of quantum information
In this introductory chapter we will quickly go through the main ingredients

necessary to comprehend the slightly more advanced topics that are the ob-
ject of this work. Far more complete presentations of the basics of quantum
information can be found in literature (for example in [2]), while the in-
tention here is to limit the discussion to the necessary notions and intuition
useful in giving the performed experiments context and meaning.
1.1 The qubit

Just as bits represent the unit of information in classical information and
computation theory, quantum information theory has its own unit, called
qubit. The key difference between the two is that while a bit can only be
1 or 0, a qubit can be in any linear superposition of 1 and 0. This distinc-
tion stems from the fact that while bits describe states of classical systems,
qubits refer to quantum systems, thus obeying the laws of quantum mechan-
ics, among which we find the superposition principle.
Therefore, any bi-dimensional pure quantum state |ψi can be written as
|ψi = α |0i + β |1i , (1.1)
where |0i and |1i are the two orthonormal vectors, written in Dirac nota-
tion, that constitute the so-called computational basis of the bi-dimensional
Hilbert space where the qubit lives, and α and β are complex numbers that
satisfy |α|2 + |β |2 = 1 whenever |ψi is normalised. A different, often more
useful way of describing qubit states is with vectors. The state in Eq. (1.1)
is equivalent to
α
|ψi = . (1.2)
β
Disregarding any global phase factor in front of a qubit state, two real
parameters are sufficient to describe a pure state. These parameters can
be two angles, and the state is then very intuitively visualised on a three-
dimensional Bloch sphere (see Fig. 1.1). Such a vector is usually written
as
θ θ
|ψi = cos |0i + eiφ sin |1i , (1.3)
2 2
1
with 0 ≤ θ ≤ π and 0 ≤ φ ≤ 2π respectively being latitude and longitude
on the sphere.
Figure 1.1: A vector on a Bloch sphere
In the same way that we can express states either as linear combina-
tions of basis states or as vectors, these two representations can be used for
operators, or observables. For example, Pauli’s σz operator is:

1 0
σz = |0i h0| − |1i h1| = . (1.4)
0 −1
Pauli operators (reported in Tab. 1.1) take on a very special role in quan-
tum information theory: their eigenvectors constitute the three mutually
unbiased bases in the qubit space. Moreover, Pauli matrices, together with
the identity matrix (sometimes referred to as σ0 ), span the 2 × 2 matrix
space. For this reason, any operation on a qubit can be expressed as a linear
combination of these four matrices. As observables, Pauli operators fulfil
Heisenberg’s uncertainty relation. They will be used throughout this work.
When acting on a qubit, Pauli operators σx , σz and σy respectively per-
form a bit-flip, a phase-flip, and both of these operations, in the computa-
tional basis (see Tab. 1.1).
The six states making up the three Pauli bases are depicted in Fig. 1.2.
1.2 Multi-qubit systems

Some of the signature features of quantum information, entanglement as a
predominant example, require combining multiple qubits to make up a more
2
Operator Matrix Eigenstates Operation

0 1 |0i±|1i σx |0i = |1i
σx |±i = √
1 0
2 σx |1i = |0i
0 −i |0i−i|1i |0i+i|1i σy |0i = i |1i
σy |Ri = √ , |Li = √
i 0
2 2 σy |1i = −i |0i
1 0 σz |0i = |0i
σz |Hi = |0i , |V i = |1i
0 −1 σz |1i = − |1i
Table 1.1: Pauli operators and their eigenstates, labelled with light polarisa-
tion directions.
Figure 1.2: The six eigenstates of Pauli operators σx , σy and σz are drawn in,
respectively, red, blue and green on the Bloch sphere.
complex quantum system. Such a system lives in a bigger Hilbert space

which consists of the tensor product between each of the qubits’ Hilbert
spaces. As the simplest example of a multi-qubit system, let us take a look at
a two-qubit system. Labelling the single qubits A and B, the Hilbert space of
the composite system AB is HAB = HA ⊗ HB , which has dimension 22 = 4.
A natural basis for this new system is the tensor product of the single qubit
space bases:
       
1 0 0 0
0 1 0 0
|00i = |0i ⊗ |0i =        
0 , |01i = 0 , |10i = 1 , |11i = 0 . (1.5)
0 0 0 1
3
Similarly to the case of one qubit in Eq. (1.1), we can write the general pure
state of two qubits as
|ψi = α |00i + β |01i + γ |10i + δ |11i , (1.6)
with the normalisation condition |α|2 + |β |2 + |γ|2 + |δ |2 = 1. In matrix

notation, the equivalent state would be
 
α
β 
|ψi =  
γ . (1.7)
δ
As a final note, even though qubits are often associated with a particu-
lar physical quantum system, for example photons, to the point where the
two terms are used interchangeably (as will be the case further on in this
thesis), it is important to notice that while a qubit is a mathematical entity,
a photon or an atom are instead physical ones. Single photons or atoms can
in principle store several - infinite even - qubits [3].
1.3 Mixed states

In an ideal scenario, we would have access to the totality of a quantum state
and relative information, and the quantum system would not decohere due
to interaction with the surrounding environment: we would then describe
such a system with a pure state of the form of Eq. (1.1). While this scenario
might apply to a quantum system in extremely limited cases, for example
an infinitesimally short time just after a projective measurement, the reality
is usually more complex. Because a system always interacts with its envi-
ronment, or whenever we do not have access to each part of a composite
quantum system, a more accurate way of describing it are mixed states.
These are statistical ensembles of pure states, where the distribution
reflects the amount of information we have on the system state. Usually
named ρ, or density operator, a mixed state is defined as
m
ρ = ∑ pi |ψi i hψi | (1.8)
i=1
where each pi represents the probability (in the ensemble of m states) to

find the system in the state |ψi i.
Pure states do not become mixed just in case of decoherence due to
interaction with the surroundings. In fact, whenever a composite system
4
includes any entanglement among its sub-parts, each part alone will be de-
scribed by a mixed state. The other way around is also true in a way: mixed
states can always be described as a reduction of a pure state living in a
bigger Hilbert space.
Intuitively, a single concept can explain the mixing of a pure state due
to two as seemingly different causes as decoherence and entanglement: a
system (for simplicity, we will consider a qubit) in a pure state interacting
with the environment exchanges information with it. This interaction gen-
erates entanglement, and the initial information representing the pure state
is thus spread on a far bigger system. Unfortunately, we are usually unable
to measure the environment at the same time as our qubit, and therefore
the information yielded to the former is lost. As a consequence of measur-
ing just the qubit part of the greater entangled system (which also includes
the environment), we necessarily obtain a mixed state. We will consider
entanglement at greater length in the next section.
As far as representation is concerned, the most convenient way to work
with mixed states is within the density matrix formalism, which also works
for pure states. Each matrix element is given by hi| ρ | ji, where i, j =
{1, ..N} refer to basis vectors in the N-dimensional Hilbert space where the
state is defined. The density matrix is therefore basis-dependent, although
the computational basis is normally used. As an example, the state in Eq.
(1.1) can be written as
∗
αα αβ ∗
ρ = |ψi hψ| = . (1.9)
α ∗β β β ∗
The eigenvalues of the density matrix are the probabilities pi of Eq. (1.8),
thus ρ is Hermitian and positive semi-definite. Finally, a normalised state
always has tr (ρ) = 1 and tr ρ 2 ≤ 1, where the inequality is saturated only
for pure states, therefore establishing a simple distinction between pure and
mixed states. Moreover, a density matrix represents a pure state if and only
if it is idempotent (i.e. ρ = ρ 2 ), or if it has rank one.
1.4 Quantum measurements

Any measurable quantity in quantum mechanics (QM) is called observable,
and is described by an Hermitian operator. For example, suppose the ob-
Rank(A)
servable A is defined by the Hermitian matrix A; eigenvectors {|ai i}i=1 of
the matrix are the observable’s eigenstates, associated to eigenvalues ai such
that
A |ai i = ai |ai i . (1.10)
5
Since the eigenvectors form an orthonormal basis, any pure state |ψi can
always be expressed as a function of them of the form:
|ψi = ∑ ci |ai i (1.11)

i=1
where complex coefficients ci = hai |ψi are probability amplitudes, with

2
∑ |ci | = 1.
Translated into words, Eq. (1.10) means that if we measure the observ-
able A on a system described by the state |ai i, we will obtain the (real)
result ai , and the system will remain unchanged. However, if the system
originally was not in an eigenstate of A, we can use Eq. (1.11) to predict
the transition probability P(ai ) = |ci |2 = |hai |ψi|2 of obtaining the ai eigen-
value, while the system after measurement will be in the corresponding |ai i
eigenstate.
If we are not dealing with a pure state, the density matrix formalism can
be used to estimate the expectation value of observable A for state ρ as
hAiρ = tr (Aρ) ≡ ∑ (Aρ)ii . (1.12)

i
According to the (most widely accepted) Copenhagen interpretation of

QM, if a system is not in an eigenstate of a measurement operator, the cor-
responding property of the system is indefinite before measurement. Upon
measurement however, the system state collapses necessarily on one of the
eigenstates of the measured observable.
This apparently counter-intuitive feature of QM is at the core of one
of the greatest scientific debates of the twentieth century, as we will see in
the next chapter. Interestingly enough though, it all becomes much more
eccentric once complex systems come into play.
While the above gives an intuitive, operational definition of measure-
ments in QM, I will now give a slightly more abstract description of the
subject, which will let us distinguish between two experimentally very dif-
ferent types of measurements used in the works presented in this thesis.
1.4.1 Projective measurements

A particular measurement in QM is in general associated with a set of mea-
surement operators {Ei }. These operators are defined in the Hilbert space of
the system upon which they act, and the set size is in general unconstrained,
while each Ei corresponds to a measurement outcome. The only constraint
on the set {Ei } descending from QM postulates is that of completeness:
∑ Ei† Ei = 1. (1.13)
i
6
In the special case in which the operators are also self-adjoint (Ei = Ei† )
and orthogonal to each other, i.e. Ei E j = δi j Ei , the measurement is called
projective, and the operators are orthogonal projectors. Therefore, an ob-
servable1 E describing a projective measurement can be decomposed as
E = ∑ ei E i , (1.14)
i
where Ei is a projector onto its corresponding eigenspace of E, with eigen-

value ei . Since Ei ’s are orthogonal to each other, the observable E defined
in a Hilbert space of dimension n can only have up to n eigenvectors, and
therefore its measurement will require up to n outcomes. Hence a projective
measurement on a qubit will have one or two outcomes. A simple formula
describes the expectation value of a projective measurement E on a pure
state |ψi:
hEi|ψi = hψ| E |ψi , (1.15)
while for mixed states Eq. (1.12) is in general used. Although being a very
special case of quantum measurements, it should be noted that projective
measurements are the most commonly implemented in quantum informa-
tion experiments, by a wide margin.
1.4.2 Generalised measurements

Starting from the more general definition of quantum measurement, with
the only requirement of completeness in Eq. (1.13), we can define a more
general class of measurements. These are usually called generalised quan-
tum measurements, where one observable is now represented by a Positive
Operator-Valued Measure (POVM), a set of positive semi-definite opera-
tors. From Eq. (1.13), we can rewrite:
∑ Fi† Fi = ∑ Ei = 1. (1.16)
i i
The set {Ei = Fi† Fi } consists of positive operators that are in general not
orthogonal to each other. Each Ei is a POVM element, or effect, and the
whole set is simply called a POVM. Upon measuring the POVM on a pure
state, the probability of outcome i is:
P(i)|ψi = hψ| Fi† Fi |ψi = hψ| Ei |ψi . (1.17)

1 Starting from here, observables and their corresponding operators will be used
interchangeably.
7
For mixed states, the probability is again estimated as
P(i)ρ = tr (ρEi ) . (1.18)
Two specific examples of POVMs that were realised for qubits in our labs
will be introduced in the following: the SIC-POVM and the Trine-POVM.
1.4.3 SIC-POVM
In the quest for the best possible POVM, two properties are highly desir-
able: first, the measurements should be able to reconstruct any quantum
state; second, it should do so in the optimal way. A measurement with
the first property is called informationally complete (IC), since its statistics
uniquely identify the state it acted upon. The property of optimality is in-
stead associated with the POVM having the minimal amount of outcomes,
and the outcomes being maximally independent. Such a POVM is called
symmetric. Symmetric informationally-complete (SIC) POVMs are thus
the ideal quantum measurements in terms of information extracted from the
measuring process. The simplest way to describe a SIC-POVM in dimen-
sion d is with a set of d 2 normalised states {|φi i} satisfying [4]
2 1
hφ j |φi i = , j 6= i. (1.19)
1+d
Starting from these states, the POVM effects can be defined as the sub-
normalised projectors:
|φi i hφi |
Ei ≡ , (1.20)
d
which are a complete set (see Eq. (1.16)). It is clear from Eq. (1.19)
that effects Ei are not orthogonal to each other.
2 The same
equation also
expresses the symmetry condition Ei E j = 1/ d (1 + d) , for i 6= j. On the
other hand, starting from Eq. (1.19) one can also conclude that SIC-POVM
effects are linearly independent, which implies that the set is IC [4].
The existence of SIC-POVMs in arbitrary dimensions is to date an open
question, although algebraic or numerical solutions in many dimensions are
known [5; 6]. In our work, we focused on the simple d = 2, where pen-and-
8
paper calculations lead to the four projectors
|φ1 i = |0i ,
√
|0i + 2 |1i
|φ2 i = √ ,
3
√
|0i + 2ei2π/3 |1i (1.21)
|φ3 i = √ ,
3
√
|0i + 2ei4π/3 |1i
|φ4 i = √ ,
3
from which the SIC-POVM effects can be calculated with the help of Eq.
(1.20). The four vectors are easily remembered thanks to their representa-
tion in the Bloch sphere, where they point to the corners of a regular tetra-
hedron, as depicted in Fig. 1.3 (left).
∣ϕ1⟩ ∣ψ1⟩
∣ϕ4⟩ ∣ϕ3⟩
∣ϕ2⟩ ∣ψ2⟩ ∣ψ3⟩
Figure 1.3: The SIC-POVM (left) and Trine-POVM (right) projectors, de-
picted on the Bloch sphere, from Eqs. (1.19) and (1.22) respectively.
1.4.4 Trine-POVM
In Paper III, we also considered a different non-projective measurement
for qubits, called Trine-POVM. The name comes from the fact that this
measurement has three outcomes, whose corresponding projectors on the
Bloch sphere form an equilateral triangle as in Fig. 1.3 (right). Due to
the normalisation condition in Eq. (1.16), the three vectors lie on the same
plane in the Bloch sphere, and can for example be written as:
|ψ1 i = |0i
√
|0i + 3 |1i
|ψ2 i = (1.22)
2√
|0i − 3 |1i
|ψ3 i = ,
2
9
for a Trine-POVM on the xz disk. Thanks to its symmetry and simplicity, the
Trine-POVM made for a good candidate for demonstrating the self-testing
methods explained in Paper III, and in particular the concept of robustness
to experimental noise.
1.5 Quantum state fidelity

At the beginning of Section 1.4, we have defined the quantity |hψ|φ i|2 as
the probability of state |φ i “transitioning” into state |ψi upon measurement.
Such transition probability represents the overlap between the two states,
and because it gives a measure of how similar they are to each other, it is also
called quantum state fidelity. The transition probability used to determine
fidelity of pure states (|φ i , |ψi) can be generalised to the case of mixed
states (σ , ρ) [7] with the formula:
q
√ √ 2
F (σ , ρ) = tr σρ σ . (1.23)
In case of pure states, the fidelity is equivalent to the transition proba-

bility. Moreover, it is symmetric (F (σ , ρ) = F (ρ, σ )) and bounded, i.e
0 ≤ F (σ , ρ) ≤ 1. The bounds are respectively met when σ and ρ are or-
thogonal or identical. Eq. (1.23) was used in all the experiments discussed
in this thesis.
1.6 Entanglement
Perhaps the most striking and essential concept in QM, entanglement never
fails to puzzle anyone who comes across it, from non-scientists to the great-
est physicist of the last century. The idea that quantum objects can be bound
by correlations that are stronger than any classical correlation one might
conceive of, was so alien and counter-intuitive that, after Einstein, Podol-
sky and Rosen pointed out some of its apparently unnatural consequences
in 1935 [1], it took almost thirty more years to figure out a way to test these
concepts in a lab. These tests are one of the main concerns of this work.
From a mathematical perspective, a pure quantum state is not entangled
if it can be expressed as the tensor product of its subsystems, while a mixed
state is not entangled if it is equivalent to a mixture of non-entangled pure
states. A general non-entangled mixture can be expressed as
ρ = ∑ pi ρi1 ⊗ ρi2 ⊗ ... ⊗ ρin , (1.24)

i
10
where the probabilities pi sum to unity and superscripts refer to each part
of the composite system. Because entanglement is a concept that inherently
involves two parts of a system, it is fairly well studied and characterised
in bipartite quantum systems. Up to six total dimensions - thus in case of
qubit-qubit or qubit-qutrit systems - the Peres-Horodecki criterion gives a
necessary and sufficient condition for separability [8; 9], therefore clearly
indicating whether a quantum system contains any entanglement. In higher
dimensions though, the criterion only provides sufficiency for separability.
It should be noted however, that in the special case of pure states, a sim-
ple method to determine if the system is entangled consists in calculating
its partial trace. If any of its sub-partitions turns out to be mixed, then the
original system necessarily contained entanglement. A system composed
by n parts is entangled even if only one of its 2n−1 − 1 possible partitions
contains entanglement. If all such partitions are entangled the system is said
to possess genuine entanglement.
1.6.1 Entanglement witness

The matter of identifying entanglement becomes even more problematic
when dealing with systems composed by more than two parts. In these sit-
uations, no general criterion applies, rather what is usually employed is a
so-called entanglement witness [10]. These are functionals of the density
matrix that distinguish between a specific type of entangled states and sep-
arable states. They are usually built ad-hoc for a particular state and mea-
surement scenario, and when linear, they are simply a set of observables.
The most famous entanglement witness, known to be sub-optimal, is Bell’s
(CHSH) inequality operator, which will be analysed in the next chapter.
A simple and convenient entanglement witness devised for a class of
N
multi-qubit entangled states√ that will be studied in this thesis, |GHZ i =
(|01 ...0N i + |11 ...1N i)/ 2 states, was introduced by Gühne and colleagues
in [11]. The witness operator is defined as WGHZ = 1/2 − D. D is the
following decomposition of the |GHZ N i state:
D = |GHZ N i hGHZ N |
1h i 1 N−1 (1.25)
= (|0i h0|)⊗N + (|1i h1|)⊗N + ∑ (−1)k Mk⊗N ,
2 2N k=0
where Mk = cos(πk/N)σx +sin(πk/N)σy and k = 0, 1, ..., N −1. A negative

value of WGHZ indicates that a state is genuinely entangled. Furthermore,
measuring F̄ = tr (ρD) returns an estimate of the fidelity of state ρ with
|GHZ N i. An experiment that determines F̄ requires exactly N + 1 measure-
ments, as opposed to a full state tomography which involves an amount of
11
measurements that grows exponentially with N. For this reason, the witness
above is commonly used in multi-photon entanglement experiments [12–
15], and will be employed extensively in Chapter 6 when characterising the
multi-photon entanglement source used in our work.
1.7 Bell states

When dealing with simpler 2-qubit states and entanglement, a set of four
pure states are usually employed as reference or starting point. These are
called Bell states [16], and are traditionally identified as
1
|ψ ± i = √ (|01i ± |10i),
2
(1.26)
1
|φ ± i = √ (|00i ± |11i).
2
Each of the Bell states is maximally entangled: if two qubits in the state
|ψ − i, for example, are spatially separated and measured in the same mea-
surement basis, perfect anti-correlated outcomes will result, independently
of the particular chosen basis. This correlation goes much further than any
classical physics theory could explain, and also implies that if an experi-
menter only knows the measurement result of their local qubit, they can
infer no conclusion whatsoever on the other qubit unless they are willing
to collaborate with the experimenter on the other side. Mathematically, this
operation is also known as “tracing out” one of the qubits. For example, if
Alice holds one qubit and ignores Bob’s, the state of her subsystem will be:
1
ρA = TrB (|ψ − i hψ − |) = (|0i h0| + |1i h1|) (1.27)
2
which is the totally mixed state, devoid of any correlation with Bob’s qubit.
For this reason Bell states are key candidates in secure communication
and cryptographic protocols [17], where collaboration and detectable eaves-
dropping are absolute requirements.
The four states also constitute an orthonormal basis for the Hilbert space
of two qubits, and can be converted into each other by means of local oper-
ations based on Pauli operators (see Tab. 1.1).
12
2. Bell tests
The terminology “Bell tests” encompasses a rather large and diverse group
of experiments that since the ’70s have aimed at shedding light on some
of the most fundamental questions about reality: is Nature “real” and in-
dependent of our knowledge and perception of it? Is it local, that is, only
influenced by its surroundings? In this chapter we will go deeper into the
notion of local realism and exactly how quantum mechanics seems to give
a way-out of the contradictions that Einstein, among others, ran into.
2.1 The EPR paradox

In their memorable 1935 paper, Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) pro-
posed a thought experiment that, with what they considered reasonable as-
sumptions, lead them to conclude that “either the description of reality given
by the wave function in quantum mechanics is not complete” or two non-
commuting observables “cannot have simultaneous reality” [1]. The para-
dox, as per EPR’s reasoning, goes as follows: imagine two particles, A and
B, that are separated while in a singlet (entangled) state of position and mo-
mentum. Following Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, if we measure the
position of particle A, its wave function will collapse in a state of indetermi-
nate momentum. Because the system is entangled though, the momentum
of particle B will also be indeterminate after the measurement on A, even
though in principle no disturbance has occurred to B. Conversely, B’s posi-
tion will be perfectly defined and opposite to A. How can B “know” to have
well defined position and indeterminate momentum, instantaneously after
a measurement is performed on A, no matter how far away it is from A?
EPR’s solution is that the system included a variable, hidden from the wave
function, that dictated to B how to behave in case of such a measurement
performed on A. In their words, we are therefore “forced to conclude that
the quantum mechanical description of physical reality given by the wave
function is not complete”.
The explicit assumption that EPR make is that a complete physical the-
ory must contain all elements of the physical reality, that is, it should be
able to predict with certainty the values of physical quantities, without in-
13
fluencing them, prior to them being measured. Such a theory is said to
be local realist, because it satisfies the principle of realism, according to
which reality is independent of our description of or interaction with it, and
its physical properties are totally defined at any point in space and time.
Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, not only cannot predict values of
incompatible observables with certainty, but goes as far as suggesting that
these values are not defined before measurement, all of it while seemingly
admitting simultaneous non-local interactions. The idea that elements of re-
ality could be influenced instantaneously by far-away events was too much
to accept for the inventor of special relativity, who suggested that a theory
that does not explicitly comply with locality cannot be correct. As we know
now, quantum mechanics is indeed not local realist, but it does not violate
causality [18, p. 426-428], therefore complying - at least in principle - with
Einstein’s idea of locality.
While most interpretations of the theory, including the ever-favourite
Copenhagen Interpretation, reject realism, therefore admitting that observ-
ables are not defined prior to measurement, other interpretations - most fa-
mously De Broglie-Bohm’s - do not discard determinism as easily, prefer-
ring instead to explicitly break the locality principle. To date, no definitive
argument has closed the discussion on which principle to follow.
We thus concluded that quantum theory cannot fulfil both locality and
realism at the same time. A careful reader might think that we are missing
the important question though: what can be inferred on Nature and local
realism from real-world experiments?
2.2 Bell’s theorem and the CHSH inequality

EPR’s solution to their paradox, namely that quantum mechanics is incom-
plete, was of course a much easier pill to swallow at the time than giving up
local realism. After all, the idea that there were hidden variables that a fairly
young theory had not considered almost seemed natural. This situation of
uncertainty remained until 1964, when John Bell proved a breakthrough
theorem [16] that could potentially settle the question once and for all: an
inequality that any local realist theory has to satisfy, regardless of known or
hidden variables. Since a theory that violates such inequality cannot comply
with local realism, and quantum mechanics does indeed predict this viola-
tion, the theorem transforms EPR’s conclusion into: either Nature is not
local realist, or quantum mechanics is plainly wrong.
While Bell’s proof is a remarkably simple and elegant one, we will con-
sider here a slightly modified version of his inequality, which proved more
useful and manageable for experimenters: the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt
14
inequality [19], as reported by Bell himself in [20, p. 36-37].
Suppose we have two qubits that are sent to two stations which perform
measurements along directions ~a and ~b respectively. The initial state of the
qubits is described entirely by (possibly hidden) variables λ , and measure-
ment outcomes can be A(~a, λ ) = ±1 and B(~b, λ ) = ±1. The fact that A and
B do not depend on ~b and ~a respectively, is the locality assumption.
The expectation value of the experiment will be
Z
E ~a,~b = A ~a, λ B ~b, λ ρ(λ ) dλ (2.1)
where ρ(λ ) is the probability distribution of λ and A and B are averages

which satisfy |A| ≤ 1 and |B| ≤ 1. Let a, a0 , b and b0 be four particular
measurement settings, then
Z
0
E a, b − E a, b = A a, λ B b, λ − A a, λ B b0 , λ ρ(λ ) dλ
Z
= A a, λ B b, λ 1 ± A a0 , λ B b0 , λ ρ(λ ) dλ
Z
− A a, λ B b0 , λ 1 ± A a0 , λ B b, λ ρ(λ ) dλ .
Using the constraints mentioned above on the outcomes and the triangle
inequality, we get
Z
|E a, b − E a, b0 | ≤ 1 ± A a0 , λ B b0 , λ ρ(λ ) dλ
Z
+ 1 ± A a0 , λ B b, λ ρ(λ ) dλ

= 2 ± E a0 , b0 + E a0 , b ,
which can finally be rewritten as

S ≡ |E a, b − E a, b0 | + |E a0 , b + E a0 , b0 | ≤ 2 . (2.2)
Bell’s theorem proves that if a theory fails to satisfy Eq. (2.2), it is

necessarily not local realist. Checking for quantum mechanics is now a
basic exercise: suppose the two qubits are in the maximally entangled state
|ψ − i (see Eq. (1.26)). If we choose the four measurement projectors to be
on the xz plane of the Bloch sphere, we can express them as a function of
the angle θ they make with the north pole (or state |0i). The expectation
value of a measurement then becomes

E â, b̂ = − cos θâ − θb̂ . (2.3)
15
Choosing suitable settings, Inequality (2.2) is comfortably violated:
√
|E 0◦ , 45◦ − E 0◦ , 135◦ | + |E 90◦ , 45◦ + E 90◦ , 135◦ | = 2 2 > 2 .
√ (2.4)
The value 2 2 is also the maximum reachable by quantum physics, and
known as Tsirelson’s bound [21].
We have therefore concluded that quantum mechanics cannot be local
realist. What about Nature?
Since the 70s, a great amount of Bell experiments have been performed,
mainly with photons as qubits [22–25], but also ions [26] and other systems
as atom condensates [27] or nitrogen-vacancies in diamonds [28]. Needless
to say, all of these experiments, and countless others, have overwhelmingly
shown that Nature is indeed not compatible with local realism. It is impor-
tant to notice that all of these experimental tests are not directed at proving
that quantum mechanics is correct or complete, but rather at demonstrating
that Nature cannot be described by any local realist theory. The fact that
some of the results come really close to Tsirelson’s bound, without over-
coming it, is at best an additional indication that quantum mechanics is the
best theory of its kind that we have at the moment. Moreover, the degree
of assurance these experiments offer changes from case to case, mainly be-
cause of assumptions that the authors had to make in order to violate the
inequality. These assumptions are often called loopholes, and we shall take
a look at them in the next section.
2.3 Loopholes
During the years, as new and more advanced Bell experiments were pro-
posed, researchers came up with weaknesses in the setups that left room for
(local) hidden variable models to invalidate results that would have other-
wise ruled out local realism. Some of these so-called loopholes are setup-
specific, but the most important and experimentally demanding ones are
found in most experimental realisations until very recently. A selection of
them includes:
Locality loophole Originally identified by Bell himself [20], this loophole
corresponds to the breaking of the main assumption in Bell’s work,
i.e. that the outcome of a measurement on one of the qubits has to be
independent from the measurement setting on the other qubit. This
is usually solved by involving relativistic causality: if measurement
settings on each qubit are chosen after the two qubits are far apart,
enough that no signal can travel between the two before the measure-
ment is completed, then there can be no causal correlation between
16
settings and outcomes. This loophole was already closed in a famous
experiment by Aspect and others in 1982 [23], when fast polarisers
were used for measurements of photon polarisation.
Detection loophole Because of imperfections in experimental setups - at-

tenuation, scattering, low detection efficiency - only a small fraction
of measurements actually output any result at all. A very simple hid-
den variable model could contain information on whether the qubit
should be detected or not, depending on the measurement setting.
The lower bound on overall detection efficiency in order to close this
loophole is 2/3, which was fairly prohibitive, especially in photon-
ics setups, until recently. The usual adjustment to this problem is
the fair sampling assumption, according to which the fraction of de-
tected qubits is a fair representation of all the qubits originally pre-
pared. This loophole was originally closed in 2001 using trapped
ions, which allow for near-unity detection efficiency [26]. Photonics
experiments were able to conquer the issue for the first time in 2013
[29], thanks to a new type of highly efficient single photon detector.
Free-will loophole We have already seen that Bell’s key assumption is that
outcomes A and B cannot depend on settings b and a respectively.
Suppose we go back in time to when the measurement devices and
the source of qubits were stored together in the same room, or even
much further to the Big Bang if necessary: if all future events have
been determined by an interaction that happened before the experi-
ment, then there can be no independence between the measurement
devices at all! This metaphysical concept is also known as super-
determinism. To-date, physicist have not yet figured out a solution to
this matter, and it is likely that one is not even possible. Whether this
is within the realm of Physics is obviously debatable, but considering
the astounding philosophical implications of Bell’s theorem, his reply
upon being accused of doing metaphysics, for considering this matter
in the first place, is easily shared: “Disgrace indeed, to be caught in
a metaphysical position! But it seems to me that in this matter I am
just pursuing my profession of theoretical physics.” [20].
For the first time in 2015, in a span of a few weeks, three research groups
managed to independently close both the locality and detection loopholes
at the same time. Two of them used entangled photons [24; 25], and one
combined photons and electronic spin in nitrogen-vacancies [28]. These ex-
periments have shown, covering all known and addressable loopholes until
proven otherwise, that Nature is not local realist.
17
2.4 Applications
As we have seen in the previous sections, Bell tests were originally con-
ceived as a way of determining whether Nature could be compatible with
any local realist theory of hidden variables, or if non-local theories, as quan-
tum mechanics, are the right path to a better understanding of the universe.
Besides the fundamental scope of Bell’s work, and its profound philosoph-
ical implications, researchers have, throughout the years, identified several
other fields that can take advantage of his theorem. Some interesting exam-
ples are reported here.
Cryptography One of the first, and most fascinating still, applications of

Bell tests was formulated by Arthur Ekert in 1991 [17]: suppose Al-
ice and Bob want to share a secure key for encryption and decryption
of secret messages. Ekert’s idea consists in exploiting the correla-
tions contained in 2-qubit entangled states. If, upon testing for the
CHSH inequality,
√ the two users obtain a maximal violation (that is,
the value ±2 2), they can be unconditionally sure that no eavesdrop-
per has tampered with their qubits, the measurement devices, or even
the qubit source. The protocol has been successfully implemented
(although assuming fair-sampling and no communication) in a very
suggestive experiment in the Canary Islands in 2006 [30].
Communication complexity The advantage of quantum over classical pro-

tocols in the complexity scenario, where Alice and Bob (and poten-
tially more users) try to solve a problem with the least communication
possible, has been shown in several experiments that used entangle-
ment and non-locality as resources [31; 32]. Even more importantly,
in 2004 Brukner and colleagues proved that in communication com-
plexity scenarios, the “violation of Bell’s inequalities is the necessary
and sufficient condition for quantum protocols to beat the classical
ones” [33].
Randomness certification Similarly to how Alice and Bob can securely

share a secret key, they can also obtain private bits that are certifiably
random through a violation of a Bell-type inequality [34].
Entanglement measure In the ever-growing number of scenarios where

entanglement is used as a resource, Bell-type inequalities can be ef-
fective in characterising the experimental setup by quantifying the
amount of entanglement in the prepared states [35; 36]. The pos-
sibility of measuring entanglement, especially in high-dimensional
systems, is of course interesting also from a fundamental perspective.
18
All of the above-mentioned applications require either loophole-free Bell’s
inequality violations, or additional assumptions to meet the setting/outcome
independence requirement. In particular, a very common assumption con-
sists in expecting there to be no signalling (or no communication) between
Alice’s and Bob’s measurement stations. As we shall see in Chapter 4, this
assumption is often taken for granted and not suitably tested.
19
20
3. Experimental background
So far, we have discussed quantum systems, notably qubits, without refer-

ring to a particular physical implementation of such mathematical entities.
In this chapter I will introduce single photon polarisation as a qubit realisa-
tion. This was the system of choice throughout the experiments reported in
this thesis, and is also one of, if not the most common qubit implementation
found in literature.
We will consider the key parts of the experimental setups used to achieve
the results presented in the following chapters, including some polarisation
manipulation components, and measurement and detection devices.
3.1 Single photon polarisation as a qubit

In general, any physical system with two well-defined, isolated states can
be visualised as a qubit. Around the world, an extremely diverse range of
possibilities has unfolded throughout the years: electronic or nuclear spin,
(trapped) ions or neutral atoms, quantum dots, superconducting Josephson
junctions or, more recently, topological systems. All of these besides, of
course, photons. Photonic qubits are so convenient and practical that dif-
ferent degrees of freedom have been taken advantage of to realise them, or
even higher-dimensional quantum systems, in a single photon.
Photons have the advantage of interacting extremely weakly with the
environment, thus preventing decoherence. They are also fairly easy to cre-
ate, move around (at the highest speed!), and detect. Single photon polari-
sation was the two-level system of choice for this work, but photon number,
time of arrival, or orbital angular momentum are also commonly used. Our
choice has several benefits: polarised photons are easily prepared with ex-
tremely high precision, in superposition or entangled states. Two variations
of the same optical components, the wave-plate, are sufficient to have ac-
cess to the whole two-dimensional Hilbert space. Finally, distinguishing
between orthogonal states at detection can be done with almost unitary ef-
ficiency.
In this work, horizontal (|Hi) and vertical (|V i) linear polarisations are
used as the |0i and |1i computational states from which all other relevant
21
states are derived, as reported in Tab. 1.1. Once a photon is prepared in a
given polarisation, it will maintain it as long as it propagates through air or
other non-birefringent media, while optical fibres and glass will in general
modify the polarisation state.
3.2 The main actors in polarisation manipulation

A significant advantage of polarisation qubits consists in the ease of manip-
ulating this degree of freedom. Very few, passive optical components, are
sufficient for most tasks. We will now take a look at the most significant
ones.
3.2.1 Wave-plates
Birefringent materials can present two different refractive indexes to light
propagating through them. In particular, in our work we used wave-plates
made of quartz, which is a positive (ne > no ) uni-axial crystal. Light polar-
isation components along the ordinary and extraordinary axes will experi-
ence a relative phase retardance φ which depends on wavelength λ , crystal
thickness d and refractive index difference in the following way:
2πd (ne − no )
φ= . (3.1)
λ
In matrix notation, this phase shift corresponds to

0 1 0
W (φ ) = . (3.2)
0 eiφ
There are two particular values of the phase φ that are of interest: when
φ = π, the wave-plate is called half wave-plate (HWP), while φ = π2 corre-
sponds to a quarter wave-plate (QWP). These components usually differ in
thickness d. By changing the angle θ between the optic axis and the inci-
dent light polarisation, we can vary the relative phase between the |Hi and
|V i components.
In the lab, we conventionally set θ = 0 when the vertical polarisation is
aligned to the optic axis. In this case, the effect of a wave-plate is expressed
by Eq. (3.2), for given d and λ . To describe the more interesting scenario of
θ 6= 0, one can rotate the frame of reference to the one where θ = 0, apply
matrix W 0 (φ ), and then rotate back to the lab frame.
Using the rotation matrix

cos θ sin θ
R (θ ) = , (3.3)
− sin θ cos θ
22
we can define the generic wave-plate matrix as
W (θ , φ ) = RT (θ )W 0 (φ ) R (θ )

cos2 θ + eiφ sin2 θ sin θ cos θ 1 − eiφ (3.4)
= .
sin θ cos θ 1 − eiφ sin2 θ + eiφ cos2 θ
Thus, for the two interesting cases of φ = π and φ = π2 , we obtain respec-

tively1

cos (2θ ) sin (2θ )
HWP (θ ) = (3.5)
sin (2θ ) − cos (2θ )
and
cos2 θ + i sin2 θ (1 − i) sin θ cos θ
QWP (θ ) = . (3.6)
(1 − i) sin θ cos θ sin2 θ + i cos2 θ
To get some intuition, we can refer once again to the Bloch sphere: if we
start with a horizontal polarisation state, a HWP will rotate it around the
y-axis, while a QWP will do the same around the x-axis. Combinations of
HWPs and QWPs can realise any unitary single-qubit gate; for example,
HWP(22.5◦ ) corresponds to a Hadamard gate.
3.2.2 Polarisers
While a wave-plate is essential in performing (ideally) unitary operations
on polarisation qubits, polarisers are very useful whenever a specific state
is required, or if we want to go from a mixed to a pure state. These are in
practice polarisation filters that only let through one particular polarisation,
depending on the orientation angle at which they are set.
The polarisers we use in the lab consist of thin parallel nano-wires that
absorb the polarisation component orthogonal to the wire orientation. By
rotating the component around the propagation axis, any linear polarisation
on the xz equator can be prepared. The action of a polariser, at an angle θ
with the vertical polarisation, can be found by applying again the same trick
as used for wave-plates, of changing frame of reference:

T 0 0 sin2 θ − sin θ cos θ
Pol (θ ) = R (θ ) R (θ ) = . (3.7)
0 1 − sin θ cos θ cos2 θ
It is worth noting that the operation of such a polariser is not unitary: the
absorbed component is “lost”.
1 Overall phases in front of operator matrices are purposefully ignored.
23
3.2.3 (Polarising) beam-splitters
Perhaps the most crucial optical component in quantum optics experiments,
a beam-splitter (BS) is a semi-transparent planar - or cubic - piece of glass
with (at least) two input and two output directions. It can be used to split,
combine, or interfere light beams or single photons. The BSs we used are
cubic glass devices consisting of two triangular halves, adhering to each
other’s hypotenuse facet through a dielectric film.
If we consider the BS in Fig. 3.1, we can describe its operation within a
second-quantisation-type of formalism [37, Section 6.2], using annihilation
operators as field amplitudes:
0
â2 t r â0
= 0 (3.8)
â3 r t â1
where (r, r0 ) and (t,t 0 ) are complex reflectance and transmittance as indi-
cated in Fig. 3.1, which are constrained by energy conservation.
Figure 3.1: A beam-splitter with two input ports (a0 , a1 ) and two output ports
(a2 , a3 ).
For a dielectric BS, the phase difference between transmitted and re-
flected beams is ±i. If we assign that phase to the reflected beam, and
further simplify to the case of a 50:50 lossless BS, we can rewrite Eq. (3.8)
as
â2 1 1 i â0
=√ . (3.9)
â3 2 i 1 â1
Polarisation-insensitive BSs as the one described are used for path-encoded
qubits and photon counting implementations, or wherever interferometry
plays a role.
In our case of polarisation qubits, a version of BS aptly called polar-
ising beam-splitter (PBS) was used. This device effectively combines the
polarisation degree of freedom with path, usually reflecting vertical polar-
isation and transmitting its horizontal component. In mathematical terms,
24
following the same notation as above
â0,H −→ â2,H
â0,V −→ iâ3,V
(3.10)
â1,H −→ â3,H
â1,V −→ iâ2,V
with the H and V subscripts indicating photon polarisation.

Naturally, PBSs in the lab are never ideal. A well-aligned, high quality
PBS will normally have a so called “polarisation leakage” of around 0.1%,
meaning that for every one thousand horizontally-polarised photons, one
will be wrongly reflected. This imperfection directly limits measurement
quality.
3.2.4 Polarisation-dependent filter

By combining the components described above in a two-path Sagnac-type
interferometer, a polarisation-dependent filter (PDF) can be obtained as de-
picted in Fig. 3.2. As the name suggests, the PDF can arbitrarily attenuate
H2
H1
Output 2
Input 1
PBS
Output 1
Input 2
Figure 3.2: A two-path Sagnac-type interferometer with two HWPs can be

used to independently attenuate |Hi and |V i components of an input state, or
to enable operations in a higher-dimensional space.
the |Hi and |V i components of an input state, independently. In order to

describe how the PDF works, we need to work in a Hilbert space bigger
than a qubit’s, since besides the usual polarisation directions, there are two
spatial modes (or paths) at play. A convenient definition of a basis in this
4-dimensional space is {|H, ai , |V, ai , |H, bi , |V, bi}, where |ai represents
25
the path corresponding to Input 1 → clock-wise rotation → Output 1, while
|bi stands for Input 2 → counter-clock-wise rotation → Output 2. In this
notation, we can describe the PBS as
 
1 0 0 0
0 0 0 i 
UPBS = 0 0 1 0 ,
 (3.11)
0 i 0 0
while the two HWPs act jointly as
UθH1 θH2 = HWP(θH1 ) ⊕ HWP(θH2 ) =
 
cos 2θH1 sin 2θH1 0 0
 sin 2θH1 − cos 2θH1 0 0  (3.12)
 .
 0 0 cos 2θH2 sin 2θH2 
0 0 sin 2θH2 − cos 2θH2
The PDF operator is then found as UPDF (θH1 , θH2 ) = UPBS UθH1 θH2 UPBS . In
Dirac notation, the action of the PDF on the state |ψi = α |Hi + β |V i sent
through Input 1 is
UPDF (θH1 , θH2 )(α |H, ai + β |V, ai) =
= α cos 2θH1 |H, ai + β cos 2θH2 |V, ai (3.13)
+ iβ sin 2θH2 |H, bi + iα sin 2θH1 |V, bi .
If we were to disregard Output 2 completely, we see that the amplitudes of
the horizontal and vertical components at Output 1 can indeed be tuned ar-
bitrarily by simply setting the desired angles on the two wave plates, hence
the name PDF.
In our work reported in Papers II and III, we used both outputs of
the PDF in order to implement non-projective measurements. This was
achieved by adding a polarisation analysis setup as in Fig. 3.4 to every out-
put, and setting all the required angles and phases on the interferometer and
the measurement wave-plates. As an example, in the case of a 4-outcome
measurement we can express the Kraus operators for each outcome as
F1 = ha| UPBS QWP(θQa )HWP(θHa )W 0 (φa ) |ai ha| UPDF |ai ,
F2 = ha| UPBS QWP(θQb )HWP(θHb )W 0 (φb ) |ai hb| UPDF |ai ,
(3.14)
F3 = hb| UPBS QWP(θQb )HWP(θHb )W 0 (φb ) |ai hb| UPDF |ai ,
F4 = hb| UPBS QWP(θQa )HWP(θHa )W 0 (φa ) |ai ha| UPDF |ai ,
as functions of the PDF HWPs angles and the HWP, QWP and phase-plate
(W 0 ) angles in outcomes 1 (θHa , θQa , φa ) and 2 (θHb , θQb , φb ). From these,
POVM effects (see Section 1.4.2) are found as Ei = Fi† Fi .
26
3.3 Polarisation qubit state preparation
The simplest and cleanest way to prepare a single qubit in a desired pure
state is by using a combination of polariser and HWP plus QWP, as in Fig.
3.3.
Figure 3.3: A generic, possibly mixed state ρ is sent through a polariser,

which transforms it into pure state |ψ 0 i. A combination of HWP and QWP
can then rotate this to any desired pure state |ψi.
Suppose we have a qubit described by a generic – possibly mixed – state

ρ. We can select a well defined linear polarisation with a polariser, after
which the state will be Pol(θP )ρPol(θP ). Now we can apply any rotation
to this pure state and prepare any other pure state on the Bloch sphere. The
result will be
|ψi = QWP† (θQ )HWP† (θH )Pol(θP )ρPol(θP )HWP(θH )QWP(θQ ) .

√ (3.15)
As an example, we can prepare the state |Li = (|0i + i |1i)/ 2 by setting
polariser and HWP to 0◦ , and QWP to 45◦ . The resulting qubit will be
in state ρ22 |Li, which is typically not normalised since the polariser is not
a unitary element. In general, given a state |ψi that we want to prepare,
we can solve Eq. (3.15) to find the angles at which we need to set the
components in the lab.
In the simpler case where we start from a pure state instead of a mixed
one, the polariser is of course not necessary. Similarly, if the state we need
is in the xz equator, just a polariser is sufficient.
3.4 State analysis and detection

In our case of single photon polarisation qubits, performing a (projective)
measurement means projecting the qubit state onto a basis of the bidimen-
sional polarisation space (see Section 1.4 for more details). As explained
above, a PBS can separate |Hi and |V i polarisation components, by map-
ping them to different output paths
PBS
|ψi = α |Hi + β |V i −−→ α |H, a2 i + iβ |V, a3 i . (3.16)
27
Positioning detectors at the outputs, we can count photons and derive prob-
abilities. For example, referring to Fig. 3.4 – and ignoring wave-plates for
now – we can experimentally determine the modulus squared of the coeffi-
cients in the state above:
N0
|α|2 = |hH, a2 | (α |H, a2 i + iβ |V, a3 i)i|2 =
N0 + N1
(3.17)
N1
|β |2 = |hV, a3 | (α |H, a2 i + iβ |V, a3 i)i|2 =
N0 + N1
where N0 and N1 are the number of “clicks” in detectors D0 and D1 during
the measurement.
Figure 3.4: A measurement station to analyse single photon polarisation.
Such a measurement, with just a PBS and no wave-plates, corresponds

to a projection on the σz basis (see Tab. 1.1). Looking at Eq. (3.16), we
notice that the output mode notation is redundant, and it will therefore be
dropped in the following.
The expectation value of σz (see Eq. (1.15)) will be
hσz iψ = hψ|σz |ψi

= h(α ∗ hH| − iβ ∗ hV |) | (|Hi hH| − |V i hV |) | (α |Hi + iβ |V i)i
N0 − N1
= |α|2 − |β |2 =
N0 + N1
(3.18)
and can be calculated directly from experimental frequencies. We can now
appreciate why a low-quality (or badly aligned) PBS will limit the measure-
ment accuracy: detectors cannot distinguish between photon polarisations,
therefore a wrongly transmitted or reflected photon will distort the counts
N0 and N1 , resulting in incorrect probabilities and expectation values.
A PBS projects a state on the σz basis because it naturally distinguishes
between the two eigenvectors of that basis, |Hi and |V i. If we want to per-
form a measurement in a different basis, we can add a HWP and a QWP in
front of the PBS. The wave-plates effectively rotate the frame of reference
28
so that the PBS will separate different (orthogonal) polarisations. For pro-
jective measurements in general, given the operator σ of an observable that
we would like to measure, we can find the wave plate angles experimentally
required by solving the following equation:
QWP(θQ )HWP(θH )σ [QWP(θQ )HWP(θH )]† = σz . (3.19)
Wave-plate settings for the most common projective measurements are re-
ported in Tab. 3.1.
Pauli operator HWP QWP Projector PBS Output

|+i h+| a2
σx 22.5◦ 0◦
|−i h−| a3
|Li hL| a2
σy 0◦ 45◦
|Ri hR| a3
|Hi hH| a2
σz 0◦ 0◦
|V i hV | a3
Table 3.1: Wave-plate angle settings are reported for Pauli measurement op-
erators, together with the PBS outputs associated to each projector.
Regarding the actual detection of a photon, we used fast avalanche

photo-diode (APD) single-photon detectors. These are diodes that get re-
verse-biased above breakdown voltage, so that a single photon creating one
electron-hole pair can be sufficient for starting an avalanche discharge, and
therefore a detection signal. The detection efficiency of such devices was
around 50% at 780 nm, while the dead-time, necessary after a detection
to recover from the avalanche, was approximately 50 ns. Because of the
high bias voltage, thermal fluctuations can sometimes start an unwanted
discharge. Such a “false” detection event is also called a dark count. The
devices we used had dark count rates of around 400 to 600 per second.
29
30
4. Signalling
As we have seen in Section 2.4, besides the fundamental progress on the

matter of local realism, a parallel branch of applications involving Bell tests
has flourished throughout the years. Teleportation and super-dense coding
are just some of the early ones, while Bell-type inequalities constitute the
backbone of the modern fields of quantum cryptography [17], communica-
tion [32] and randomness certification [34], among others.
These applications usually require near-optimal violations of Bell in-
equalities in order to be effective, and for this reason additional assumptions
are made in the process. In particular, fair-sampling is often assumed, where
the detected qubits are postulated to be a fair representation of all qubits
emitted by the source (see Section 2.3 for more details). In these cases, the
crucial assumption in Bell’s theorem that Alice’s outcome has to be inde-
pendent of Bob’s setting, and vice-versa, can apparently be breached. This
dependence is also called signalling, as it seems as if the two measurement
stations were communicating. Because this event appears highly unlikely,
testing and disproving it is usually not done in literature. Unfortunately, as
we reported in Paper I, an actual test of apparent signalling on even the
highest violation of the CHSH inequality [38], shows an extremely signifi-
cant breach of the no-signalling assumption.
In the work carried out in Paper I, we formulated a simple test that can
estimate the significance of apparent signalling from the data of a CHSH
test, and we experimentally identified the main explanations to such issue.
Measurements that confirmed our conjectures were performed, eventually
reaching a result that was reasonably free of such troubles.
As we will see in Section 4.2, our tests are not only useful from the
fundamental point of view of reliably disproving local realism, but also have
more practical uses. Indeed, as we discussed in Paper I, failing to meet the
non-signalling requirements may lead to a distortion and invalidation of any
experimentally derived result.
We shall see in this chapter how physicists usually deal with this prob-
lem, and what the consequences are in conjunction with some of the most
common assumptions on Bell setups. While our work mainly addresses
experiments where fair-sampling is assumed, I will discuss briefly the rele-
vance of our results in absence of the detection loophole.
31
4.1 A definition
Bell’s requirement that measurement outcomes do not depend on far-away
measurement settings imposes that no communication happens between Al-
ice and Bob prior to or during measurement. Such communication, or trans-
fer of information, is also called signalling. We can therefore say that a
successful violation of a Bell inequality must be free from signalling. On
the other hand, as we have seen in Section 2.3, Bell tests have rather strict
requirements on overall experimental efficiency. For practical or techno-
logical reasons though, the greatest majority of experiments and applica-
tions to date do not meet this requirement, choosing instead to assume fair-
sampling, and taking for granted that no signalling took place in the partic-
ular scenario. After all, the idea that no communication happens between
two distinct and separate measurement devices does not seem that much of
a stretch. Still, in all of these cases it is important to rule out any dependence
between Alice’s settings and Bob’s outcomes, and vice-versa.
4.1.1 A mathematical definition

In the usual CHSH scenario (see Section 2.2 for more details), we define the
quantity P(a, b|x, y) as the joint probability of Alice and Bob respectively
obtaining outcomes a and b upon measuring settings x and y. We can then
express the non-signalling conditions in mathematical form in the following
way:
A
αa,x ≡ P(a, _|x, 0) − P(a, _|x, 1) = 0 ∀ x, a
B
(4.1)
αb,y ≡ P(_, b|0, y) − P(_, b|1, y) = 0 ∀ y, b
where superscripts A and B refer to either party, and marginal probabilities

P(a, _|x, y) and P(_, b|x, y) correspond to ∑b P(a, _|x, y) and ∑a P(_, b|x, y)
respectively.
In Alice’s case for example, these conditions can be understood as fol-
lows: since how often she obtains outcome a cannot depend on Bob’s set-
ting y, such probability, after summing over (or tracing out) Bob’s out-
comes, has to be the same whether he measures setting 1 or 0, thus the
difference between the two cases be zero. Moreover, the eight conditions in
Eq. (4.1) are really four independent ones upon considering normalisation
of probabilities, P(_, _|x, y) = 1 for any x, y.
In a real experiment though, the four α’s are never expected to be ex-
actly zero, no matter how ideal the scenario is. Because of statistical noise,
the differences in Eqs. (4.1) will fluctuate within one or two standard de-
viations from zero. For this reason, it is useful to apply a normalisation on
32
the experimental uncertainty, that is for example:
A
α+1,0 P(+1, _|0, 0) − P(+1, _|0, 1)
A
= A
, (4.2)
σ+1,0 σ+1,0
which should ideally be below 2. A direct check of the experimental data

can be done by inserting measured frequencies and uncertainties in the four
Eqs. (4.2). In Paper I, we also reported a more advanced method based on
likelihood for a joint test of all four conditions.
4.2 Some key motivations

There are various reasons for analysing whether conditions (4.1) are satis-
fied. In the following, some relevant ones are reported, ranging from fun-
damental to practical in scope:
No-signalling assumption As we discussed in Section 2.2, the indepen-

dence of Alice and Bob in the test is a crucial starting point of Bell’s
theorem. Violating the conditions in Eq. (4.1) is a clear, quantifiable
sign of breaching such assumption. This renders, in principle at least,
any conclusion of the Bell test invalid. This is the most fundamental
motivation for making sure that the above conditions are met.
Result certification If any signalling in the form expressed above is present

in an experiment, it may be the case that the final result for the pa-
rameter S (see Eq. (2.2)) is distorted as compared to the same ex-
periment in a signalling-free scenario. As an example, in Paper I
we identified the different overall efficiency between outcomes in the
same measurement station as being a potential source of apparent sig-
nalling. We then performed a CHSH experiment with a fixed, previ-
ously set difference between Alice’s and Bob’s respective outcomes.
The experiment violates, to an extreme degree, the non-signalling
conditions, as verified with our own test, and yielded a rather strik-
√ S = 2.947 ± 0.003, which is far above the quantum bound of
ing
2 2 ≈ 2.828. Using the same efficiencies, we simulated the expec-
tation value of S for the Werner state ρW = p |φ + i hφ + | + (1 − p)1/4,
as a function of mixing parameter p, reported in Fig. 4.1 (taken from
Paper I).
While such a result would certainly raise concerns in the experi-
menter, the same effect can happen in a controlled, malicious man-
ner: Eve could intercept all communication between the source and
33
3.0
2.5
2.0
S parameter
1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
p
Figure 4.1: Expectation value of the S parameter as a function of the mixing

parameter p for Werner state ρW = p |φ + i hφ + | + (1 − p)1/4. The red line
corresponds to the two outcomes in each measurement station having equal
efficiencies, and the blue line to ηA− = 0.48ηA+ , and ηB− = 0.2ηB+ , where
ηA− is the efficiency of Alice’s −1 outcome. In the latter case, the values
of p in between the dotted black lines incorrectly establish CHSH violation.
Reported from Paper I.
Alice’s and Bob’s stations, and send them classically correlated sys-
tems instead. If she has access to Alice and Bob’s detectors, she could
then tamper with the efficiencies so that they get S > 2, and they will
not know about her unless they perform tests that include additional
measurements. Alternatively, the two parties can run the statistical
test of the non-signalling conditions that we presented in Paper I, on
the same data used to estimate S, which would show the failing of
those conditions, thus prompting them to discard the data. This type
of issue is particularly relevant for all applications where the CHSH
result is used as a means of certification, which could therefore be
rendered invalid.
Systematic error discovery Looking at Eq. (4.2), it is clear that a sys-

tematic, constant violation of the non-signalling conditions√ (in the
A
nominator) will cause the ratio α+1,0/σ+1,0
A to increase as N, with N
indicating sample size. Therefore a signalling analysis that shows
such a dependence can reveal the presence of otherwise unknown
systematic effects in the experiment. An example of such a problem
can be seen in Fig. 4.2 taken from Paper I. Not only is this helpful
in case of setup optimisation, but even if the error cannot be fixed, it
can at least be accounted for, therefore giving a fairer estimation of S
34
40
35
signalling significance (σ)

30
25
20
15
10
0
0 200 400 600 800 1000
time (s)
Figure 4.2: Example of apparent signalling showing dependence as square

root of sample size (proportional to time in the experiment), due to constant
systematic sources. Reported from Paper I.
in case its value is used for any sort of certification.
For all these reasons, testing conditions (4.1) is not only a matter of
fulfilling Bell’s original assumptions in order to obtain a true violation, but
it is also crucial in order to have reliable qualitative and quantitative results
to use for applications.
4.3 Experimental sources of signalling

In Paper I, we identified four important systematic issues that will cause
the failing of conditions in Eq. (4.1):
1. Power drift of pump laser: if only one detector per station is used,
the two outcomes of each measurement have to be checked in se-
quence. If the total rate of photon changes between different settings,
in particular with a systematic drift, the fair-sampling assumption is
breached.
2. Polarisation-dependent collection efficiency: rotating wave-plates

or polarisers to apply different settings can slightly misplace the pho-
ton path. This can be a problem if single-mode fibres are used to
collect photons at the outputs, since these fibres have core diameters
of very few micrometers. On the other hand, using only multi-mode
fibres would collect different spatial modes, significantly decreasing
the visibility.
35
3. Measurement setting reproducibility: a low precision in setting the
angles of wave-plates or polarisers can lead to apparent signalling,
as it is equivalent, in a way, to Alice changing her measurement de-
pending on Bob’s setting. This is particularly problematic if only one
round of settings is performed.
4. Asymmetric collection efficiency: if two detectors per station are

employed, having different efficiency at the two outputs of the same
station may violate the fair sampling assumption. The reason why
this issue causes signalling has to do with the coincidence filter that is
applied on detection events in cases where fair sampling is assumed:
since Alice’s marginal probabilities are calculated from events con-
ditioned on Bob’s outcomes, they are not truly local, but will instead
depend on Bob’s measurement, and in turn on the efficiency of his
outcomes. An example with a short mathematical derivation is pro-
vided in Paper I.
While this list is of course not complete, it includes the most relevant errors
which are induced by standard procedures in CHSH experiments, especially
if one is not aware of the issue.
4.3.1 Solutions and results

In approaching the mentioned problems, the first step consisted in trying
to design a setup that would naturally be insensitive to as many of them as
possible.
Problem 1 above is shared among experiments that use only one detec-
tor on each side. A simple solution is providing another detector each to
Alice and Bob, so that a complete measurement takes place every time a
photon on every side is detected, and the normalisation is the same for all
outcomes.
A clean solution to problem 2 meanwhile, consists in replacing single-
mode fibres with multi-mode ones, while moving the single-mode fibres
“upstream” in the setup, before any rotating optics. This way, unwanted
spatial modes are still filtered out, while the much larger multi-mode cores
are effectively insensitive to small beam displacements. Experiments that
suffer from these two limitations includes the works with the current highest
CHSH violations [34; 38].
Including the improvements mentioned above, we proceeded to test the
effects of the two remaining signalling sources on measured data, in a series
of experiments. After showing the result of a typical experiment where
visibility and collection efficiency were optimised (reported in Fig. 4.2), we
36
showed that repeating the four CHSH measurement settings several times
(a rigorous Bell test would also include setting randomisation), and using
more precise motors to rotate wave-plates, could significantly reduce the
effects of problem 3, assuming that the motor precision is symmetric around
a central position (more details about this are given in the next section).
Regarding problem 4, we described a simple method to verify the dif-
ference in collection efficiency, and used variable attenuators to equalise
them.
Finally, after taking care of all the above-mentioned issues, we ran a
CHSH experiment which yielded S = 2.812 ± 0.003, with a signalling sig-
nificance of 1.3 standard deviations. This is the highest violation that we
know of, free of apparent signalling.
The reader is referred to Paper I for more details on the different ex-
periments and their results.
4.4 Concerning common assumptions
As mentioned above, our work concerns experiments that assume fair sam-
pling, and therefore only use coincident detections for data analysis. All
works that do not suffer from the detection loophole, including in particular
loophole-free ones [24; 25; 28], calculate marginal probabilities from sin-
gle events alone, and will therefore not introduce any non-local effect in the
data processing stage. As a consequence, the test presented in Paper I will
not reveal any apparent signalling. While some of the experimental issues
introduced in Section 4.3 will of course impact the final result, for example
asymmetric efficiency, these will in general only deteriorate the Bell pa-
rameter, or should be accounted for as systematic uncertainties. Regarding
other common experimental assumptions, as locality or freedom-of-choice,
they are effectively irrelevant for the work presented above, since apparent
signalling is introduced after the measurements, due to the “non local” data
processing.
4.5 Additional experimental work
While the core results are detailed in Paper I, additional experimental work
which might give a more complete overview of what has been done in the
lab is reported here.
37
4.5.1 State characterisation
In order to saturate the CHSH inequality, a maximally entangled state is
required. Any of the Bell states in Eq. (1.26)
√ would be equally good, and we
chose to prepare |φ + i = (|00i + |11i)/ 2. Naturally, the actual prepared
state is not the ideal |φ + i, and in order to characterise it we measured its
visibility in the horizontal/vertical and diagonal bases. The results were:
visibilityσx = 0.994 ± 0.001,

(4.3)
visibilityσz = 0.998 ± 0.001.
4.5.2 Wave-plate motor hysteresis

One of the main sources of apparent signalling that was identified in Paper
I is related to how precise the motorised mounts used to rotate wave-plates
are. A potential solution, besides the obvious substitution with better mo-
tors, was found in repeating the measurement settings several times. The
underlying assumption was that the motors have little to no hysteresis, so
that position errors would not be carried from one setting to the next, and
increase with the repetitions.
A test to confirm this, in a given motor, consisted in the following: a
series of 200 identical measurement settings, each followed by another set-
ting, was executed, and the expectation value of each of the former calcu-
lated. The deviation from the average is plotted in the histogram in Fig. 4.3.
16
14
12
Frequency
10
0
−0.06 −0.04 −0.02 0.00 0.02 0.04
< E > −E
Figure 4.3: Histogram of deviation of expectation values from the average

for 200 identical measurements, each interrupted by a rotation to a different
position. The data was fitted by a Gaussian curve (p-value 0.97).
As we supposed, the motor mostly went back to the same initial po-
sition, and deviations from it are distributed normally, showing a well-
38
behaved (unbiased) Gaussian behaviour.
4.5.3 Laser power stability

Pump power drifts can also introduce apparent signalling if the different
measurement settings are performed sequentially, with only one detector
per user. This was not the case in the experiments in Paper I, but we made
sure this was not an issue in our setup nonetheless.
Each of the measurements reported lasted less than an hour. As part of
characterising the stability of our experimental setup, the pump laser power,
as measured by its internal power-meter, has been monitored for around 7
hours. A histogram of the data can be found in Fig. 4.4.
0.16
0.14
0.12
Frequency
0.10
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0.00
3272.5 3275.0 3277.5 3280.0 3282.5 3285.0 3287.5
Power (mW)
Figure 4.4: Histogram of pump laser power output as measured every 5 sec-
onds, for 7 hours. The data was fitted by a Gaussian curve that revealed an
emitted power of (3280 ± 2) mW.
An extremely good power variation of less than 0.1% was calculated,

and the Gaussian shape of the histogram indicates that no power drift hap-
pened.
39
40
5. Certifying a generalised
quantum measurement
In Chapter 2, we analysed Bell’s theorem, and explained how it was origi-

nally devised as a way to test the principle of local realism in Nature. While
that is the only explicit concern of the theorem, physicists have luckily not
resisted the urge to push its consequences far beyond overcoming classical
theories. Throughout the years, Bell tests have found use in applications
that combine their rejection of classicality with the most peculiar features
of quantum mechanics, in a remarkably powerful mix that finds relevance
in an ever-growing range of fields.
Among the most elegant of such combinations is the currently develop-
ing subject of device-independent (DI) quantum information. In this chap-
ter, we will analyse two different approaches to the DI certification of gen-
eralised quantum measurements, one leveraging entanglement and quantum
non-locality, and the other based on the so-called prepare-and-measure sce-
nario, realised respectively in Papers II and III.
As we have seen in Section 1.4.2, generalised measurements are, as the
name suggests, the most general version of measures that can be defined in
quantum mechanics. For this reason, they have been called the “standard”
measurements and play a key role in information-theoretic reconstruction of
the theory of quantum physics [39]. They have also been proven to be op-
timal for quantum state tomography [40], and for many of the applications
mentioned in Section 2.4, including quantum key distribution (QKD) [41],
randomness certification [42] and entanglement verification [43]. Because
of their broad range of applications, generalised measurements have been
realised before, both outside the context of device-independent certification
[44–46], and inside it for a three-outcome measurement on a qubit [47]. In
our work however, we aimed for combining the minimal assumptions of
DI certification with the best kind of realisable quantum measurement, the
informationally-complete measurement introduced in Section 1.4.3.
After a quick comparison of the two approaches we followed, I will
describe them in more details as they were applied to the works in the two
papers mentioned.
41
5.1 Device independent quantum information
While Ekert’s original proposal for entanglement based QKD [17] already
contained the seeds of the device-independence paradigm, it took a few
years longer until Mayers and Yao explicitly proposed that observable ex-
perimental frequencies could uniquely determine the quantum state and
measurements used to obtain them [48]. Their idea was formalised in 2007,
when Acín and collegues proved that quantum non-locality, as certified by
a Bell inequality, could be used to enforce cryptographic security in pres-
ence of untrusted, black-box devices [49]. The security proof of DI-QKD
lead the way to subsequent application of the DI paradigm to other fields.
Most notably, Pironio and collaborators presented in 2010 a proof of DI
randomness expansion, along with an experimental demonstration [50].
Since those two initial proofs, the key advancements in the field can
be associated with a process of reconciling the abstract, ideal definitions of
devices in DI theory, with the very real and imperfect equipment used in
laboratories. Indeed, while DI protocols often make no theoretical a priori
assumptions on the specific functioning of devices in the lab, some basic
characterisation is usually still required, for example the isolation of these
black-boxes from each other. This reality-check type of process leads to the
analysis of scenarios where some assumptions are relaxed, and part of the
equipment is considered to be trusted and characterised, in order to lower
the extremely demanding experimental requirements imposed by fully DI
protocols. Two important scenarios that have been considered are repre-
sented by the concepts of semi-DI and measurement-DI, where the dimen-
sion of the quantum system is upper-bounded [51], or the source is trusted
[52], respectively. On the other hand, the idea of robust self-testing sprung
up, whereupon results yielded by imperfect devices lead to certifiable prop-
erties in spite of their sub-optimality, thanks to DI proofs that are tolerant to
experimental noise [53].
Papers II and III present two of these approaches, with the common
aim of certifying generalised quantum measurements.
5.2 Two ways to certify a generalised quantum mea-

surement
As explained in the previous section, the original idea of DI certification
relies on the proof of non-locality made possible by a Bell inequality. This
was also the starting point of the work in Paper II, where we realised a
proof-of-principle experimental certification of a genuine 4-outcome POVM
42
on a qubit by taking advantage of a particular Bell inequality. Such an ap-
proach is characterised by the following steps:
1. A source sends entangled states to Alice’s and Bob’s measurement

stations.
2. Alice and Bob perform simultaneous measurements that correspond

to a modified Bell operator. The outcomes of such measurements are
used to estimate the relevant correlations.
3. The upper bound in the context of such Bell operator is calculated, in

case only measurements with two or three outcomes are performed.
4. If the experimental correlations overcome both bounds, the performed

measurement is certified to be a genuine 4-outcome one.
While a similar procedure works very well when certifying a shared secure
key or random bit sequence, it runs into a delicate problem when certify-
ing non-projective measurements: because of Neumark’s dilation theorem,
a non-projective measurement on a given Hilbert space can in general be
re-cast as a projective measurement in a bigger space. As a consequence,
the third step in the procedure above relies on the assumption that the mea-
surement is performed on a qubit. As we will see further on, in Paper II we
arguably found a way around this problem, and at least partially removed
the qubit assumption. Nevertheless, this issue hints at a different way of
certifying non-projectivity. This second method is based on the Prepare-
and-measure paradigm, and it was realised in Paper III. Its most important
steps are:
1. Alice has a source of heralded photons, which are explicitly assumed

to be described by qubit states.
2. Alice acts on the qubit with a unitary operator, thus preparing some
quantum state; she then transmits the qubit to Bob, who performs a
measurement on it. Again, relevant correlations between preparation
and measurement outcome are estimated.
3. The correlations are used to calculate the expectation value of a Wit-

ness, the bounds of which are also estimated, in case only projective
or 3-outcome measurements are performed.
4. If the experimental result turns out higher than those bounds, Bob’s
relevant measurement certifiably has four outcomes.
43
The assumption on the dimension of the quantum systems used, though
limiting, is arguably fairly natural in the scenario of generalised measure-
ment certification. The concept of non-projectivity in fact hints at a Hilbert
space of fixed dimension to begin with. On the other hand, the much sim-
pler prepare-and-measure scenario comes with several significant practical
advantages compared to entanglement-based experiments. From the exper-
imental point of view, neither space-like separation between observers nor
highly entangled states are required. On the theoretical/computational side,
the much smaller Hilbert space allows for a remarkable simplification of the
analysis, in turn enabling more advanced and versatile certification methods
to be developed. This is at least in part why we were able to carry the certifi-
cation methods much further in Paper III compared to Paper II. As a quick
overview, a comparison of some of the main features of the two approaches
used in the two papers is reported in Tab. 5.1.
Entanglement-based Prepare-and-measure
Quantum states Entangled Single qubits
Source Untrusted Partially trusted (dim bound)
Alice & Bob Space-like separated Sequential
Measurement Coincident Bob only
DI Full Partial
Table 5.1: Comparison of the main features of the entanglement-based and

prepare-and-measure certification approaches. Pros and cons are coloured in
green and red respectively.
In conclusion, for all applications where semi-device independence is

sufficient (and in particular the dimensionality of the quantum systems can
be trusted), the prepare-and-measure approach is by far the better choice,
thanks to its simplicity. Whenever full device-independent certification is
required though, the entanglement-based approach is to date the only viable
option. I will now outline in more details the procedures followed in Papers
II and III in order to certify non-projective measurements, together with
principal respective results.
5.3 Entanglement-based certification

The Bell-type inequality upon which our entanglement-based certification
relied is called the Elegant Bell Inequality (EBI). The EBI was first intro-
duced in an appendix of a preprint manuscript by Gisin, in 2007 [54]. The
44
reason behind its name will become clear by the end of this section. Simi-
larly to its more famous CHSH sibling (or ancestor!), the EBI scenario in-
volves two parties, Alice and Bob, sharing a 2-qubit system. Alice performs
three binary measurements, while Bob four, out of which they each may get
outcomes +1 or −1. From the combined measurements, they calculate joint
probabilities P(a, b|x, y), where (x, y) are Alice’s and Bob’s measurement
settings, and (a, b) their respective outcomes. Using these frequencies, they
may estimate the value of the Bell parameter
βel =E11 + E12 − E13 − E14 + E21 − E22

(5.1)
+ E23 − E24 + E31 − E32 − E33 + E34 ,
where Exy = ∑a,b abP(a, b|x, y).

The EBI reads βel ≤ 6, since 6 is the upper bound for local hidden vari-
able theories. From a quantum perspective, the inequality is saturated by a
maximally entangled state and measurements
1
A1 = σx , B1 = √ (σx − σy + σz ),
3
1
A2 = σy , B2 = √ (σx + σy − σz ),
3
(5.2)
1
A3 = σz , B3 = √ (−σx − σy − σz ),
3
1
B4 = √ (−σx + σy + σz ),
3
√
for which the Tsirelson-type bound of βel = 4 3 ≈ 6.93 is found. While Al-
ice’s measurements are along the three orthogonal axes of the Bloch sphere,
Bob’s vectors point at the corners of a tetrahedron, exactly like the SIC-
POVM projectors introduced in Eq. (1.21), from which they differ only
by a unitary rotation. The tetrahedron shape seems to be part of the rea-
son behind the elegant attribute to the inequality, which became part of its
signature name.
In order to combine the non-locality certification from the EBI with
the SIC-POVM property of information completeness, we started from a
modified version of βel introduced in Ref. [42]:
4
βelm = βel − k ∑ P(a = i, b = +1|x = 4, y = i) ≤ 6. (5.3)
i=1
Here, Alice’s additional measurement setting (x = 4) consists in a 4-outcome

non-projective measurement. Most importantly, βelm has the same quantum
45
√
bound of 4 3 as βel , and the bound is reached when the four vectors of
Alice’s A4 measurement are anti-aligned to Bob’s projective measurements,
thus forming again the SIC-POVM tetrahedron:

1 α −β (1 + i)
A4,1 = ,
2 β (−1 + i) 1−α

1 1−α β (−1 + i)
A4,2 = ,
2 −β (1 + i) α
(5.4)
1 1−α β (1 − i)
A4,3 = ,
2 β (1 + i) α

1 α β (1 + i)
A4,4 = ,
2 β (1 − i) 1 − α
√ √
with α = 3−6 3 and β = 63 .
Unfortunately, certifying the symmetric POVM with the above inequal-
ity is experimentally not feasible, since it would require to hit the optimal
quantum bound exactly. What can definitely be done though, is certifying
the arguably most interesting property of the SIC-POVM, that is, informa-
tion completeness. An IC-POVM with the minimal amount of outcomes,
that is, d 2 , is aptly called minimal informationally complete (MIC) POVM.
As we have shown in the supplementary material to Paper II, proving IC
for qubits is equivalent to showing that the measurement has four outcomes
(three independent plus normalisation). In order to check that, we have
computed the maximum value that can be obtained for a generalised variant
of Eq. (5.3), in case Alice’s A4 is a 3-outcome measurement. The calcu-
lations were carried out with Navascués, Pironio, and Acín’s semi-definite
programming method [55], also known as NPA.
5.3.1 Summary of results

First, the twelve EBI measurements produced βel = 6.909 ± 0.007 (see Eqs.
(5.1) and (5.2)). This result let us estimate a lower bound on the fidelity
of our quantum state to the maximally entangled |φ + i Bell state. Using
the (DI) SWAP method [56], we calculated the fidelity to be at least 0.947.
This step of the protocol is particularly delicate, since the method described
above to certify a non-projective measurement relies on the assumption that
Alice’s system is a qubit. That said, we can now look at the results involving
the 4-outcome measurement. After optimising βelm to our data, we obtained
a final expression for Eq. (5.3) which we labelled βIC , the explicit and
lengthy form of which can be found in Paper II. With NPA’s methods, we
46
calculated the bounds on βIC for 3- and 4-outcome measurements to be:
3-outcome 4-outcome
βIC ≤ 6.8782 ≤ 6.9883. (5.5)
Since four outcomes are IC for qubits, the higher bound also sets the limit
for quantum correlations.
Taking into account statistics from Alice’s A4 measurements, we ob-
tained the experimental result:
exp
βIC = 6.960 ± 0.007. (5.6)
The result lies more than 11 standard deviations above the 3-outcome bound,
therefore certifying that Alice’s A4 was a genuine 4-outcome, MIC measure-
ment.
5.3.2 Experimental assumptions

The certification protocol presented in Paper II is DI, in the sense that
its conclusions are drawn based only on experimentally produced statis-
tics, and do not require additional assumptions on the devices used, besides
what is dictated by the scenario and quantum theory. On the other hand,
our particular experimental results were obtained under the rather common
assumptions of no-communication, fair-sampling and freedom of choice.
In order to remove the no-communication assumption, and close the local-
ity loophole (see Section 2.3), much faster polarisation rotation devices and
wider separation between measurement devices are required. Fair-sampling
can be avoided with very high overall system efficiency. As we demon-
strated in the supplementary material to Paper II, a minimum efficiency of
94% is required in this experiment. Freedom of choice is of course a whole
different matter, and its resolution goes beyond the scope of this thesis.
5.4 Prepare-and-measure certification

Similarly to the entanglement-based case, the prepare-and-measure sce-
nario in Paper III involves two parties, Alice and Bob. In this case though,
Alice has a source of heralded single qubits. On each qubit, she applies one
of four unitary transformations (corresponding to her input x ∈ {1, 2, 3, 4})
in order to prepare a specific qubit state, which she then sends to Bob. He
in turn performs one of three binary-outcome (b = ±1) measurements, ac-
cording to y ∈ {1, 2, 3}). From the measurement outcomes, they estimate
47
the experimental probabilities P(b|x, y), in order to calculate the value of
witness
1
A0SIC = P(b = Sx,y |x, y), (5.7)
12 ∑
x,y
with  
0 0 0
0 1 1
Sx,y = 
1
. (5.8)
0 1
1 1 0
As in the entanglement-based protocol, the witness is maximised when Al-
ice’s four prepared states form a regular tetrahedron on the Bloch sphere (as
in Fig. 1.3 (left) for example), while Bob performs measurements √ σx ,σy
and σz . In this case, the theoretical maximum of ASIC = 1/2 1 + 1/ 3 ≈
0
0.7887 is achieved. The next step consists in providing Bob with an addi-
tional 4-outcome measurement (y = 4), while modifying the witness above
as
4
1
ASIC = P(b = S |x, y) − k ∑ P(b = x|x, y = 4). (5.9)
12 ∑
x,y
x,y x=1
√
The ideal result of ASIC = 1/2(1 + 1/ 3) would then certify that Bob’s last
measurement was the SIC-POVM. Due to the impossibility of eliminating
all experimental noise though, what can be concluded when a lower-than-
optimal result is obtained?
5.4.1 Summary of results

One way to answer the question above consists of course in following a
procedure akin to the one in Paper II: numerically calculate upper bounds
of ASIC in case Bob’s fourth measurement has two or three outcomes. This
is what we did for the 3-outcome bound. For the projective measurement
bound instead, the relative simplicity of the prepare-and-measure scenario
allowed us to derive a tight analytical limit for the witness. After optimising
ASIC over k to have the best resilience to noise, we obtained the bounds
2-outcome 3-outcome 4-outcome

ASIC ≤ 0.7738 ≤ 0.7836 ≤ 0.7887 (5.10)
for k = 1/5. Experimentally, the 16 combinations of preparation and mea-

surement yielded the result
exp
ASIC = 0.7851 ± 1 × 10−4 , (5.11)
48
which is many standard deviations above both projective and 3-outcome
bounds, therefore certifying that Bob’s fourth measurement is genuinely a
4-outcome one.
Besides the qualitative conclusion just presented, the prepare-and-mea-
sure approach granted the possibility of a deeper, quantitative analysis of
the measurement. In Paper III, we introduced a method to pursuit robust
self-testing of a target non-projective measurement. Following that method,
we targeted the SIC-POVM, in order to get a quantitative estimate of the
fidelity of Bob’s fourth measurement to it. We therefore proceeded to nu-
merically approximate the worst-case fidelity of around 3 × 105 random 3-
and 4-outcome measurements, under the constraint of our experimental cor-
relations. The analysis returned a worst-case fidelity of approximately 0.98
to the qubit SIC-POVM. It is important to point out that this result is not
tight, but represents a numerical approximation made feasible by the bound
on the Hilbert space in the prepare-and-measure scenario. A tight lower
bound can in many instances be obtained with the SWAP method, although
for rather technical reasons this could not be pursued in the case of the SIC-
POVM. The reader is referred to Paper III for more details on why that was
the case, and for an example of a different non-projective measurement (the
Trine-POVM introduced in Section 1.4.4) where tight results were achieved
for both non-projectivity and fidelity to the target measurement.
5.4.2 Experimental assumptions

In addition to the key upper bound on the dimension of Alice’s prepared
quantum systems, fair-sampling was also assumed with regards to the mea-
sured events. In contrast with the work in Paper II though, studies on
minimum requirements for overall system efficiencies were not carried out,
since the work was done in the context of exploring methods for robust
self-testing of non-projective measurements, rather than applications with
adversarial or malicious players.
49
50
6. Multi-photon entanglement
source
Entanglement is not only, in Schrödinger’s own words, “the characteris-

tic trait of quantum mechanics” [57], but also a key resource in quantum
information theory. In Section 2.4, we have examined some of the most
common applications of Bell tests that make use of such resource. In the
past few decades, a greatly diverse range of pairs of systems have been
entangled, spanning across several orders of magnitude in size. Neverthe-
less, the first system used to investigate entanglement, and still one of, if
not the most prominent and accessible, is photons. Their role is even more
important in application-oriented experiments: thanks to their availability,
mobility, and quantum-limited detection efficiency, photons are obviously
the way to go in all quantum communication schemes, and in general in all
applications that require transferring information between distant parties.
This is true both in the classical and in the quantum realms. In the recently
staggering efforts toward developing real-world quantum networks, entan-
gled photons are posed to be the carriers of quantum information between
network nodes, for example in distributed quantum computation or a more
ambitious quantum internet [58]. The ability to generate states of more than
two entangled photons has opened the doors to more extensive fundamen-
tal and applied research in quantum mechanics, for example in relation to
Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger [59] or cluster [60] states and one-way quan-
tum computing [61]. However, the number of entangled photons that can
be feasibly generated is limited by the overall detection efficiency and the
high requirements in terms of state fidelity.
Current state of the art experiments have shown probabilistic generation
of up to eight [12; 13] or ten [14; 15] entangled photons. All of these works
use spontaneous-parametric down-conversion of blue light to produce red
entangled photons. This was also the method of choice for our source,
and I will therefore compare our results with the papers mentioned above
whenever possible. I will start from a brief introduction of the optical down-
conversion process, and then move on to the actual setup characterisation,
which will include abundant details on our results concerning multipartite
entanglement.
51
The experimental work outlined in this chapter has been carried out
in collaboration with Muhammad Sadiq, Hammad Anwer and Mohamed
Nawareg.
6.1 Spontaneous-parametric down-conversion: a qubit

source
Among the several ways of generating pairs of photons entangled in po-
larisation, we chose an extremely common – and reasonably simple – non-
linear effect called spontaneous-parametric down-conversion (SPDC). This
process relies on the fact that upon application of a strong electromagnetic
field, the polarisation of a dielectric material stops being linearly propor-
tional to the field, and higher order terms appear1 :
h i
P(t) = ε0 χ (1) E(t) + χ (2) E 2 (t) + χ (3) E 3 (t) + ... (6.1)
where ε0 is the free-space permittivity, χ (i) are the i-th order dielectric sus-
ceptibilities, and for simplicity we took both the polarisation P(t) and the
electric field E(t) to be scalar quantities.
In case of a material with large enough second order susceptibility, there
is a chance that a photon propagating through it will down-convert into two
photons of lower energy. The process has to preserve energy and momen-
tum, that is, respectively:
ω p = ωs + ωi
(6.2)
k~p = ~ks + ~ki ,
where omegas refer to frequencies of, in order, the incident field (or pump
photon), signal and idler photons. The second equation, involving mo-
menta, is also called phase-matching condition. Only the case of ωs = ωi ,
known as degenerate down-conversion, concerns this work. Because of
Eqs. (6.2), signal and idler photons will be naturally created with very
strong correlations, which pave the way for entanglement.
In our experiments we used Beta-Barium Borate (BBO), an uni-axial
birefringent non-linear material. The polarisation perpendicular to the plane
defined by ~k and the optic axis is called ordinary polarisation, and while
propagating, it will experience the ordinary refractive index no . Conversely,
a light field polarised in that plane is described as extraordinarily polarised,
and will witness the extraordinary refractive index ne . A BBO crystal can
1A
much more detailed description of non-linear processes can be found for
example in Chapters 1 and 2 of [62].
52
satisfy the phase-matching conditions in two ways, depending on the angle
of incidence of light with respect to the optic axis orientation:
Type-I down-conversion In this case the incident light has extraordinary

polarisation, while both down-converted photons have ordinary po-
larisation. Schematically:
ω pe → ωso + ωio . (6.3)
This process therefore yields two photons of identical polarisation.
Type-II down-conversion Again, incident light is extraordinarily polarised.

However, one of the outgoing photons will be ordinarily polarised
while the other will have extraordinary polarisation:
ω pe → ωse + ωio or ω pe → ωso + ωie . (6.4)
Because of the two possibilities given in Eq. (6.4), type-II down-conversion

naturally offers polarisation-entangled photon pairs directly out of a single
crystal. However, thanks to the identical polarisation, photons produced
by type-I processes will exit the crystal in phase and are in general more
indistinguishable, thus prone to quantum interference, compared to type-II.
6.1.1 Pump
Pump photons must have the exact spectral, temporal and polarisation prop-
erties needed for optimal down-conversion and entanglement yield. To this
end, we used a mode-locked Ti:Sapphire pulsed laser emitting 140 fs long
pulses at 780 nm, with a repetition rate frep of 80 MHz. The spectral width
of the emitted light was approximately 8 nm, while the average power was
3 W. To achieve the required degenerate down-conversion that yields 780
nm photons, the pump light underwent a non-linear process called second-
harmonic generation, which can be intuitively imagined as the opposite
of down-conversion. A 1 mm thick Bismuth triborate (BiBO) non-linear
crystal was employed in this case, producing a 390 nm – 1.1 nm wide –
deep-violet beam of around 1 W of average power after focusing the pump
on the crystal.
The out-coming laser light, collimated again, contained a significant
amount of residual 780 nm pump, which was filtered out with the help of
multi-reflection on several dichroic mirrors (see Fig. 6.1). The resulting
deep-violet pulses were then sent to the down-conversion source.
53
Figure 6.1: 780 nm red light pulses from the femto-second laser are focused
on a BiBO crystal for second harmonic generation (SHG). The up-converted
violet light at 390 nm is then collimated and sent to the down-conversion
setup, while residual red light is filtered out with the help of several dichroic
mirrors (DM).
H D
Pump polarisation
SPDC polarisation
Figure 6.2: Femto-second pulses at 390 nm undergo SPDC in two non-linear

crystals (BBO) inside a Sagnac interferometer, with a polarising beam-splitter
(PBS) at the input port. A lambda-half wave-plate (HWP) sets the desired
pump polarisation, while a dichroic mirror (DM) lets the pump light through
and reflects down-converted photons on their way out.
6.1.2 Polarisation-entangled pair source

The source of polarisation-entangled photons is depicted in Fig. 6.2. In or-
der to achieve relatively high down-conversion efficiencies, the pump pulses
are focused into a triangular-shaped Sagnac interferometer through a polar-
ising beam-splitter. This results in the horizontal and vertical components of
the beam propagating in opposite directions along the interferometer. The
lambda-half wave-plate before the DM can rotate the pump polarisation to
cos(2θHWP )[H] + sin(2θHWP )[V ], for any arbitrary wave-plate angle θHWP ,
thus allowing for free tuning of the relative weights between |Hi and |V i
components in the subsequent entangled state.
At focal distance from the lens, 2 mm thick BBO crystals are placed
on each side of the beam-splitter outputs. The two crystals are identical
and with their axes oriented 90◦ to each other, so that each of the counter-
54
propagating polarisations is left unaffected by the first crystal it encounters,
while undergoing type-I down-conversion inside the second. The down-
converted photon pairs of orthogonal polarisations, emitted in a cone whose
aperture depends on the phase-matching condition, are then recombined at
the beam-splitter, and reflected by a dichroic mirror onto a collimating lens.
Because of the very short duration of the femto-second pump pulses, the
down-converted light can be thought of as a ring. The rings coming from
the two crystals are shown as photographed by a single-photon CCD camera
in Fig. 6.3. After the collimating lens, their diameter is approximately 15
mm.
Figure 6.3: Down-converted photons distributed in a ring, as captured by

a single-photon CCD camera. The two rings correspond to the two BBO
crystals (see Fig. 6.2).
Keeping in mind the efficiency of the down-conversion process of ap-

proximately 10−12 , the pump power can be adjusted to have the required
amount of pairs produced per pulse, on average. An investigation of the
effect of changing the pump power on the produced entangled states will be
presented in Section 6.3. When the down-conversion process is successful
in only one crystal – and strictly not both – the generally entangled state
|ψi = cos(2θHWP ) |HHi + eiφ sin(2θHWP ) |VV i is prepared, provided that
the events of down-conversion from either crystal are completely indistin-
guishable. The two entangled qubits are found at diametrically opposite
points of the down-conversion ring. Both θ and φ can be adjusted freely in
our setup.
The pronounced spectral width of the entangled photons can be appre-
ciated in Fig. 6.4.
6.2 Scaling up to GHZ states

Thanks to the HWP in front of the SPDC Sagnac interferometer (see Fig.
6.2), a wide class of quantum states (entangled or not) can be produced in
our setup. However, the source was built with the explicit goal of generating
genuinely polarisation-entangled multi-photon states. For this reason, our
55
No filter
3 nm filter
4000
Intensity (AU)
3000
2000
1000
0
740 750 760 770 780 790 800
wave-length (nm)
Figure 6.4: Wavelength spectrum of down-converted photons (blue) as mea-

sured with a single photon spectrometer. To improve interference and in-
distinguishability, the photons are passed through a 3 nm high-transmittivity
bandpass filter (yellow).
work mainly focused on the production and characterisation of multi-qubit

GHZ states, and the following sections will as a consequence concentrate
on that.
As we can see in Fig. 6.3, pairs of entangled photons are created across
the entire 2π angle of the down-conversion ring. Since phase-matching
Eqs. (6.2) do not set any preferential direction, the result is that the process
happens across random opposite locations on the rings. If the probability of
a pair being produced per pump pulse in a given direction is RP , then with
probability RnP , n pairs will be produced in the same pulse, and they can be
used to obtain states of more than two entangled qubits.
A common technique to generate multiple down-conversion pairs found
in literature consists in sending the pump beam through several sequential
down-conversion sources, and collecting one pair from each (as in Refs.
[12–15]). This method has the inherent disadvantage of pump power de-
creasing across subsequent crystals. Moreover, aligning, focusing and col-
limating the pump beam needs to be carried out for each crystal, and can
result in different spectral properties for different pairs, besides requiring
additional work and components. In our setup, we devised a novel way
to carry out multi-pair generation that uses a single SPDC source, instead
of one source for each pair. We achieve this (for five pairs) by splitting
the down-conversion rings on a ten-facet pyramidal mirror, as depicted in
Fig. 6.5, and collecting the various pairs from different sections of the same
rings. Since the pump beam is identical for all pairs, our method is re-
markably simpler compared to a multi-crystal scheme. It requires fewer
56
Figure 6.5: Depiction of the gold-coated ten-facet pyramidal mirror used to
split the SDPC rings into ten different modes, from the side (left) and from
the top (right). Each mode corresponds to a single qubit in the prepared GHZ
state. The mode numbering is consistent with Fig. 6.7.
components and can be more compact. It is also scalable to more pho-

ton pairs, which would simply involve a pyramidal mirror with accordingly
higher number of facets.
In order to entangle photons from independent pairs, we use a technique
similar to entanglement swapping [63], illustrated in Fig. 6.6. From two
PBS
BBO BBO
390 390
Figure 6.6: Independent Bell pairs are entangled with each other by inter-
fering one photon from each pair on a PBS. Upon post-selecting the events
when one photon is obtained in each of the four output modes, the maximally
entangled |GHZ 4 i state is obtained. In our setup, different pairs correspond to
different directions around the down-conversion cone of a single BBO crystal.
pairs of entangled photons, we take the two signal photons and overlap them
on a PBS. The resulting interaction, known as Hong-Ou-Mandel (HOM)
interference, effectively entangles the four photons. Finally, to obtain a
GHZ state, we post-select the events when each PBS interaction results in
a photon at each outcome mode. Provided that the interacting photons are
indistinguishable, all which-path information prior to the PBS is erased,
though we can be certain that they will be both in |Hi or |V i states. The
resulting state after the PBSs (and post-selection) is the GHZ state of N
57
qubits
1
|GHZ N i = √ (|H1 ...HN i + |V1 ...VN i) . (6.5)
2
The above experimental configuration is also known as star configuration,
and is at the core of many recent realisations of multi-photon entangled
states [12–15].
In our labs, we realised the star configuration for up to five photon pairs,
although because of limits set by pair-generation rates, only four such pairs
can be entangled, and the remaining one is used as an independent high-
quality Bell state source. The setup configuration is depicted in Fig. 6.7.
Each mode and its respective prime constitute a source of entangled pairs,
and considering the entangling interference at the PBSs, we can identify the
nine entanglement sources reported in Tab. 6.1. In the remaining of this
Source # photons Modes (in Fig. 6.7)

γ12 2 1 + 10
γ22 2 2 + 20
γ32 2 3 + 30
γ42 2 4 + 40
γ52 2 5 + 50
γ14 4 1 + 10 + 2 + 20
γ24 4 3 + 30 + 4 + 40
γ6 6 1 + 10 + 2 + 20 + 4 + 40
γ8 8 1 + 10 + 2 + 20 + 3 + 30 + 4 + 40
Table 6.1: List of multi-photon entanglement sources found in the setup in

Fig. 6.7. In the source name, the superscript represents the number of photons
involved, while the subscript helps to distinguish between sources with the
same number of photons.
chapter, I will discuss some of the key properties of the setup in general,
and then show relevant experimental characterisation of the sources from
Tab. 6.1.
6.3 General setup characterisation

As with any experimental optical setup, when designing and characteris-
ing a multi-photon entanglement source of the type described above, two
aspects are of fundamental importance:
58
Pump
5 5'
1' 4'
2' 3'
4 3 2 1
Filter
HWP
QWP
PBS
SMF coupler
Figure 6.7: Multi-photon entanglement source - experimental setup. -

Experimental setup used to generate and characterise multi-photon entangled
states used throughout this work. More details on each part can be found in
the text.
59
• Quantitative yield Commonly referred to as source brightness, it
will in general depend on the photon collection efficiency ξ , and the
total pair generation probability (per pump pulse) RP . The resulting
N-fold coincidence probability for |GHZ N i states will be very close
to
N/2
(RP ξ N )/2N/2−1 , (6.6)
where the denominator is due to post-selection.
• Qualitative yield Usually associated with quantum state fidelity or

visibility, it gives an estimation of how close the produced states are
to the ideal (possibly |GHZ N i) state. Among the many factors that
impact the state quality in the case of multi-photon states, key ones
are higher-order down-conversion events and photon-photon distin-
guishability.
While it is interesting to analyse the qualitative and quantitative properties

of a source independently, the two aspects are clearly interdependent. As
an obvious example, increasing the pump laser power trivially improves the
pair generation probability RP , which in turn also increases the probability
of nth -order down-conversion RnP , therefore decreasing the state fidelity
(due to so called accidental events).
Nevertheless, we will now consider the two aspects separately, starting
from quantitative considerations.
6.3.1 Source brightness

As was mentioned before, the source brightness can be described as the
product of the total (single photon) collection efficiency ξ and the pair pro-
duction probability RP . For a given non-linear crystal, ξ depends on a few
factors:
• Optical attenuation in the beam path, due to scattering, reflection

and absorption.
• Coupling of the photon spatial mode into the optical fibre before the
detectors.
• Detection efficiency.
The attenuation can be reduced by having the minimum amount of opti-

cal elements in the photon path, and having anti-reflection coated mirrors
and lenses, while coupling into optical fibres is optimised through optimal
mode-matching. As an example, the path corresponding to mode 1 in our
60
setup is attenuated by a factor of approximately 3/4 from the SPDC crys-
tals to the fibre coupler, resulting in one every four photons not reaching
the fibre. The main culprits are the golden decagon mirror, the Sagnac-loop
PBS and the uncoated down-conversion crystals. Regarding detection effi-
ciency, the avalanche photo-diodes (APDs) used in the setup have a quan-
tum efficiency ranging from 0.5 to 0.6. As a side note, ξ is also inversely
proportional to the spatial walk-off in the non-linear crystal, due to optical
birefringence, which increases for longer crystals. While this is more of
an issue in type-II sources because of the opposite polarisations of signal
and idler photons, it still affects coupling in type-I SPDC, since the spatial
modes exiting the crystals will be elliptical, and the longer the crystal the
higher the ellipticity.
The overall collection efficiency ξi for mode i can be experimentally
estimated from the rate of coincident events Ci,i0 between i and its twin
mode i0 , and the rate of twin single events Si0 , as ξi = Ci,i0 /Si0 . In our setup,
ξ ranged from 0.16 to 0.21, depending on the particular mode considered.
The pair production probability RP is instead determined by:
• SPDC efficiency.
• SPDC crystal length.
• Pump power.
While the non-linear process efficiency is related to the joint spectral am-
plitude (JSA) and will not be discussed here, RP is roughly inversely pro-
portional to the crystal length [15]. A longer crystal increases the down-
conversion probability, though it also increases the distinguishability of in-
dependent pairs, since they might be created at locations far away along
the crystal, farther than the coherence length of the wave-packets set by the
spectral filters. For the above reasons, crystals of 2 mm thickness were cho-
sen for our source1 . Finally, RP is proportional to the pump power, which
could be easily controlled in our setup thanks to a HWP positioned before
the up-conversion crystal. The average power of the up-converted 390 nm
beam in our source ranged from close to zero up to around 860 mW. For
mode i in our setup, RP,i can be estimated as:
Si Si0 Si
RP,i = = . (6.7)
frep Ci,i0 frep ξi
In Fig. 6.8, the experimental dependence of RP as function of pump power
is reported, for mode 1.
1 The choice of optimal crystal type and thickness was carried out before the
author joined in the work.
61
0.10
0.08
0.06
RP
0.04
0.02
100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800

Pump power [mW]
Figure 6.8: The experimental pair production probability for mode 1, as de-
termined from Eq. (6.7), is plotted against pump power. The relation is linear
for small RP , as shown by the linear fit.
Characterising RP and ξ is of fundamental importance in order to be

able to estimate the expected generation rates for multi-photon GHZ states,
as per Eq. (6.6). For our source, we have measured such rates in the case of
1-, 2- and 4-photon generation, as function of pump power. The results are
reported in Fig. 6.9.
2-photon coincidences [kHz]
500
4-photon coincidences [Hz]
2500 1500
400
Singles [kHz]
2000
300 1000
1500
200 500
1000
500 100
0
250 500 750 250 500 750 250 500 750
Power [mW] Power [mW] Power [mW]
Figure 6.9: Experimental rates for singles in mode 1, (2-photon) coincidences

in modes 1 and 10 , and 4-photon coincidences in modes 1, 10 , 2, 20 , all plotted
against pump power. Interpolation curves show that the relation is linear for
singles and coincidences, while it is quadratic for 4-photon coincidences, as
expected from Eq. (6.6).
Most crucially, using Eq. (6.6), we can predict rates of N-photon coin-
cidences as function of pump power and collection efficiency ξ . A simple
way to visualise this dual-variable relation is by removing the dependence
on ξ (since this is not an adjustable experimental parameter anyway). This
simplification can be carried out by plotting estimated rates as function of
62
measured 2-photon coincidences, which also depend on ξ . Such a plot is
reported in Fig. 6.10 for 4-, 6- and 8-photon rates.
101
100
Event rate
10−1 4-photons [kHz]

6-photons [Hz]
8-photons [mHz]
10−2 4-photon (data) [kHz]
6-photon (data) [Hz]
100 200 300 400 500 600

2-photon coincidences [kHz]
Figure 6.10: 4-, 6- and 8-photon rates as function of 2-photon coincidences,

as expected from Eq. (6.6). Experimental data for 4- and 6-photon coinci-
dences is also reported.
6.3.2 Source fidelity

If brightness is one side of the “source coin”, the other is certainly the qual-
ity of the produced states. Depending on the task at hand, there might be a
lower bound on the fidelity of a quantum state which needs to be overcome
in order to succeed in the task, as is the case in Paper II and III in this
thesis, or simply the highest possible fidelity might be desirable, in order
to improve the absolute quality of an experimental result, as for example in
Paper I. Either way, the higher the fidelity to the target quantum state, the
better a source will perform.
To understand the factors that impact the generated state fidelity, we
need to start from a key clarification: in our setup, we consider photons as
polarisation qubits; However, a photon’s wave function consists of several
other degrees of freedom, as time, wavelength, orbital angular momentum,
etc. In order for us to limit the discussion to polarisation, all other quanti-
ties have to be identical across wave functions of different photons, so that
they can be effectively ignored in the quantum state description. In a real
experiment though, different photons will of course never be completely
identical, or indistinguishable. Their differences, together with other minor
experimental imperfections, constitute the limits that prevent achieving uni-
tary fidelity, although as we will see one can get remarkably close in certain
cases.
63
In this section, we will go through the most relevant of such imper-
fections, and describe some of the methods we followed to mitigate their
impact. In particular, we consider:
• Spatial, temporal and spectral overlap of |Hi and |V i photons’ wave

functions (in the same photon pair).
• PBSs’ extinction ratios, i.e. their ability to transmit (reflect) all,

and only, horizontally (vertically) polarised photons. Also known as
crosstalk or polarisation leakage.
• Higher-order down-conversion events, which give rise to so called

accidental coincidences.
• Distinguishability of independent photons, which depends on the

spatial, temporal and spectral overlap of wave functions of photons
coming from different pairs.
Spatial overlap of orthogonally polarised photons coming from the two

BBO crystals can be obtained first by superimposing the down-conversion
rings far away from the source. We periodically did this with a single-
photon camera at a distance of over three meters (a picture of the rings ob-
tained during this process is reported in Fig. 6.3). Next, a far more precise
overlap is achieved by optimising photon collection at several fibre couplers
for one crystal, and then slightly adjusting the direction of the beams com-
ing from the other crystal by fine-tuning the relevant mirror in the source
Sagnac loop. Temporal overlap is adjusted by translating one of the crystals
in the propagation direction. If more precise adjustments are required for
some of the beams, thick birefringent quartz crystals can be used to retard
one of the polarisations with respect to the other. This was not the case in
the experiments discussed in this thesis. Spectral overlap is instead obtained
by simply using the same (3 nm FWHM) spectral filters for both polariza-
tions. The overall overlap directly affects the experimental visibility of the
produced 2-qubit Bell states in the σx measurement basis. Visibilities of up
to 0.997 were obtained in our setup for this basis, which is in line with some
of the highest values reported in literature [34; 64].
The extinction ratio of each PBS is optimised at the time of the initial
building of the setup. In our source, PBSs were selected and aligned so that
a ratio of at least 300:1 correctly to wrongly polarised photons were found
in every output mode. The non-zero crosstalk af a PBS can in general be
accounted for as a systematic error in final results, although this was not
necessary in the work carried out in this thesis, as it was not among the
main sources of error.
64
Higher-order SPDC events
Down-conversion of multiple pump photons in a single pulse, into the same

modes, is without a doubt the most limiting factor on the final state fidelity
among those listed above. Because most photons are lost on the way to
detection, these additional photons can create spurious, uncorrelated coin-
cidences which result in errors in the derived results. As we have seen in the
previous section, the probability of generating n photon pairs for each pump
pulse is RnP , while RP is directly proportional to the pump power (see Fig.
6.8). As a consequence, at low power the higher order terms can usually be
neglected. However, as shown in Fig. 6.18, high pump power is required for
generating many-photon states, and the issue quickly takes centre stage for
6- and 8-photon states. In case of 2-photon experiments, accidental coinci-
dences can be estimated from experimental data by counting coincidences
between the two outcomes in a given mode. These can then be subtracted
from the relevant counts when processing data. While this is generally done
when calculating state fidelity, it is not standard procedure in certification
protocols as the ones presented in Papers II and III. Another way to esti-
mate the rate of accidental coincidences aci j between outcomes i and j is
with the help of the following argument. Given a rate of single events Si , the
probability of outcome i being triggered is Si / frep . The rate of coincidences
between such events and a detection in mode j is then
Si S j Si S j
aci j = · frep = . (6.8)
frep frep frep
This method can be used for states of any number N of qubits, by substitut-
ing Si with the sum of all possible N − 1 coincidences. From the equation
above, we can predict the effect that accidental coincidences will have on
the visibility of the two qubit |φ + i state in σz basis. If we label Alice’s
(Bob’s) H,V outcomes as 1, 2 (3, 4), we can write the visibility explicitly
in terms of accidental coincidences, as:
C13 + ac13 +C24 + ac24 −C14 − ac14 −C23 − ac23

Vσz = . (6.9)
C13 + ac13 +C24 + ac24 +C14 + ac14 +C23 + ac23
To simplify, we can assume the state obtained if all higher-order events were
neglected is the ideal |φ + i Bell state (as we will see in the following, this
assumption is fairly close to reality). In this case, C13 = C24 = C, C14 =
C23 = 0, S1 = S2 = S3 = S4 = S, and ac13 = ac14 = ac23 = ac24 = ac, thus
we can rewrite:
2C 1
Vσz = = . (6.10)
2C + 4ac 1 + 2S/ξ frep
65
Since we know the relation between the rate of singles and pump power in
our setup from the linear fit in Fig. 6.9, we can plot Vσz as function of pump
power and ξ . The resulting graph is reported in Fig. 6.11.
Figure 6.11: σz visibility of |φ + i state is affected by accidental coincidences

due to higher-order SPDC events, and is plotted here as function of pump
power and collection efficiency ξ as predicted by Eq. (6.10).
In conclusion, the issue of accidental coincidences can be mitigated by

improving collection efficiency or by decreasing pump power at the cost of
longer measurement times. While we have a fairly simple way to roughly
predict how accidental coincidences affect the visibility of 2-qubit |φ + i
states, it is far less trivial to do so in the case of N-qubit states, with N > 2.
This is mostly due to the fact that the visibility of such states depends on
the HOM interference between independent photons. Modelling HOM in-
terference in the case of squeezed states of multiple photons (as opposed to
single-photon Fock states) is a difficult problem, and is still the subject of
current research in the field [65].
Distinguishability of independent photons

The possibility of entangling photons belonging to different, independent
down-conversion pairs is at the core of our multi-photon source. Without
HOM interference at the PBSs, and post-selection, only entangled states
of two photons could be achieved in our source, and their tensor products
would make up bigger states, with no genuine entanglement added. Just like
the wave functions of H and V photons in a pair need to be identical in all
degrees of freedom (except polarisation!) in order to produce maximally en-
tangled Bell states, the wave functions of photons interfering at a PBS need
66
to be absolutely identical, or indistinguishable, in order for the interference
process to give rise to maximally entangled states between different pairs.
In addition to the measures described above, some further conditions have
to be met for HOM interference to be optimal. First of all, the two photons
coming from different pairs have to be spatially and temporally overlapped.
Spatial overlap is achieved by optimising collection efficiency at the fibre
couplers for one photons, and then using the mirrors along the path of the
other photon to optimise collection efficiency of the latter (without moving
the couplers!). As a result, all photons entering the SMFs and reaching the
detectors will have followed the same path from the interference PBS on-
wards. Temporal overlap depends instead on relative path length, and we
adjusted it by adding two retro-reflectors on each path, one of which was
mounted on a micro-metric translation stage, longitudinal to photon propa-
gation. In addition, the spectra of independent photons also need to overlap
perfectly. This is achieved with the help of the narrow-band spectral filters
located before each measurement station (see Fig. 6.7).
Most crucially though, the interference process will result in a maxi-
mally entangled state only in case Fock states of single photons enter the
PBS inputs. Since the down-conversion process actually produces sub-
Poisson distributed squeezed states, the interference quality is disturbed by
the higher-order down-conversion events. In order to quantify this effect,
we first have to define a “quality” parameter: the HOM visibility. Given two
down-converted pairs of photons, of defined, identical polarisations, we can
send the signal photons into the same input of a PBS. If the two photons are
indistinguishable, they will always come out bunched together at one out-
put. This is precisely the HOM effect [66]. The four-fold coincidence rate
between the two trigger photons and the two detectors at the outputs of the
PBS should therefore be zero. Every time the two photons are instead distin-
guishable, they will independently pick an output, and there will be a 50/50
chance that they end up in different detectors, thus giving rise to a four-fold
coincident event. A relatively simple way to make the photons completely
distinguishable is by delaying them by an amount of time greater than their
wave-packet coherence. This is possible in our setup thanks to the retro-
reflectors on translation stages. We can then define the HOM visibility as
the difference between the rate of four-fold coincidences when the photons
are out of coherence and when they are perfectly overlapped, divided by the
former. An experimental example for the interference of modes 1 and 2 is
shown in Fig. 6.12.
In contrast with the case of Bell state visibility, there is no simple way
to predict the HOM visibility as function of pump power (as in Fig. 6.11).
Nevertheless, we can of course measure it, as shown in Fig. 6.13. From
67
100
80
4-photon rate [Hz]

60
40
20
0
-600 -400 -200 0 200 400 600
Relative delay [µm]
Figure 6.12: HOM interference as measured through photon-photon bunch-

ing at a PBS, for modes 1 and 2 in setup from Fig. 6.7. The visibility is defined
as the ratio of the difference between maximum and minimum of the curve,
divided by the maximum. The shape of the curve is representative of the phys-
ical shape of the photons’ wave functions. In the data shown, the Gaussian fit
returned a visibility of approximately 80%, and a FWHM of ≈ 209 µm.
the measurements, we can identify the upper limit of photon indistinguisha-

bility for our source to be around 0.91, in line with other works reported in
literature [14].
6.4 Characterisation of individual sources

After discussing theoretical predictions and experimental characterisation
concerning the whole setup in general, we will now go into more details
about the specific multi-photon sources listed in Tab. 6.1. We will start from
the smaller 2-photon sources and move up to the bigger ones progressively.
6.4.1 2-photon sources

The SPDC source discussed in this thesis naturally produces pairs of pho-
tons entangled in the polarisation degree of freedom. As we have seen
above, any two diametrically opposite locations on the down-conversion
ring will with some probability contain two entangled photons. In our setup,
we decided to select five such pairs, therefore producing ten pair-wise en-
tangled photons in ten separate paths. Of these five 2-photon sources, γ52 is
detached from the other ones, and was for this reason used in the experi-
ments performed in Papers I, II and III. We have therefore characterised
γ52 more in depth compared to the other 2-photon sources. Nevertheless,
68
0.90
0.85
HOM visibility
0.80
0.75
0.70
0 200 400 600 800

Pump power [mW]
Figure 6.13: HOM interference visibility for modes 1 and 2 at several dif-
ferent pump powers. The exponential fit (of p-value 1.0) returned an upper
bound for the visibility of approximately 91%.
since the source has in principle no preferential direction along the down-
conversion ring, and neither has the rest of the setup, the other sources can
perform very similarly to γ52 , as we will see.
Source γ52
Since Bell states form a basis for 2-qubit states, the ability to prepare perfect
Bell states effectively means that any pure 2-qubit state can be produced.
In the source, a simple lambda-half wave plate (HWP) and a phase-plate
(PP) in one of the two modes are enough to convert among any of the Bell
states. Considering this, we focused our characterisation on the fidelity√of
our experimental state to the maximally entangled |φ + i = (|00i + |11i)/ 2
state. In order to characterise it, we performed a full state tomography with
the maximum likelihood method [67]. In addition, we employed motorised
wave-plate rotation stages so that we could repeat the measurements several
times. Each setting was measured for 30 seconds, and the nine tomography
settings were repeated 35 times. The results are reported in Fig. 6.14.
The prepared state showed a median fidelity to |φ + i of (99.7 ± 0.1)%,
which is at least as good as some of the best results found in literature
[34; 64]. The uncertainty is the standard deviation of the 35 measurement
repetitions. While these results were corrected for accidental coincidences,
the measurements were performed at extremely low pump power (of the
order of ∼ 1 mW), so that the correction does not affect the final result on
state fidelity, up to the uncertainty.
69
0.5 0.5
0.4 0.4 0.4
0.3 0.3 0.2

0.2 0.2 0.0
0.1 0.1
−0.2
0.0 0.0
−0.4
|V V i |V V i
|HHi |V Hi |HHi |V Hi
|HV i |HV i |HV i |HV i
|V Hi |V Hi
|V V i |HHi |V V i |HHi
Figure 6.14: Full quantum state tomography of the maximally entangled

states produced by source γ52 , as reconstructed with the maximum likelihood
method. The real (left) and imaginary (right) parts of the density matrix are
plotted.
Other 2-photon sources
The visibility in H/V (σz ) and +/− (σx ) bases for the remaining four
sources of photon pairs, together with the discussed results for source γ52
as a comparison, is reported in Tab. 6.2.
Source Vσz (%) Vσx (%)

γ12 99.65 ± 0.01 98.86 ± 0.01
γ22 99.83 ± 0.01 99.28 ± 0.01
γ32 99.9 ± 0.1 99.4 ± 0.1
γ42 99.66 ± 0.02 99.66 ± 0.02
γ52 99.8 ± 0.1 99.6 ± 0.1
Table 6.2: Experimental visibility in σz and σx bases for the 2-photon sources
in the setup. The different uncertainties are mainly due to different measure-
ment duration.
6.4.2 4-photon sources

By taking two pairs of entangled photons and interfering the two signal
photons at a PBS, we can create maximally entangled |GHZ 4 i states with
the help of post-selection. In particular, in our setup in Fig. 6.7, we have
two 4-photon sources available by overlapping modes 1 and 2 (γ14 in Tab.
6.1), or modes 3 and 4 (γ24 ). In order to characterise these sources, we set out
to perform two different experiments: a full state tomography for γ24 , and
70
the estimation of fidelity witness D introduced in Section 1.6.1 for source
γ14 .
Source γ24
To characterise this 4-photon

√ source, we prepared the state |GHZ 4 i =
(|HV HV i + |V HV Hi)/ 2. Each of the 81 measurement settings required
for a full state tomography was measured for 600 seconds, at a rate of
approximately 15 4-photon coincidences (post-selected) per second. Af-
ter correcting foraccidental events, a maximum likelihood fidelity of
90.65 +0.11 +0.02
−0.14 −0.01 % was estimated. Because of the lower rate of coin-
cidences compared to the 2-photon sources discussed above, uncertainties
were estimated with Monte Carlo simulations that included two relevant
experimental errors: poissonian distribution of counts, and limited motor
repeatability when setting wave-plate angles. Each uncertainty is reported
in the result above in respective order. The resulting density matrix is de-
picted in Fig. 6.15.
Figure 6.15: Full quantum state tomography of the |GHZ 4 i states produced
by source γ24 . The real (left) and imaginary (right) parts of the density matrix
are plotted.
Since the fidelity is higher than 50%, we can confirm that the source
produces genuinely entangled |GHZ 4 i states.
Source γ14
For this experiment

√ we have prepared the standard state |GHZ 4 i = (|HHHHi
+ |VVVV i)/ 2. The operator D introduced in Eq. (1.25) requires 5 mea-
71
surements in case of 4 qubits. The measurement operators are:
e ⊗4 = |Hi hH|⊗4 + |V i hV |⊗4 ,
Z
⊗4
⊗4 0 0
M0 = cos π σx + sin π σy = σx⊗4 ,
4 4
⊗4
⊗4 1 1 σx + σy ⊗4
M1 = cos π σx + sin π σy = √ ,
4 4 2 (6.11)
⊗4
⊗4 2 2
M2 = cos π σx + sin π σy = σy⊗4 ,
4 4
⊗4
⊗4 3 3 −σx + σy ⊗4
M3 = cos π σx + sin π σy = √ .
4 4 2
Measuring each setting for 600 seconds at a rate of approximately 15 4-
photon coincidences per second, we estimated the values of the operators
above as in Fig. 6.16. Through Eq. (1.25)), we derived a fidelity of our
state with |GHZ 4 i of 90.1 +0.7 +0.1
−1.1 −0.2 %, which again includes a correction
for accidental events.
1
Experimental result
0.5
-0.5
-1
Ze⊗4 M0⊗4 M1⊗4 M2⊗4 M3⊗4
Figure 6.16: Experimental values for measurement operators in Eq. (6.11),

as measured for source γ14 . The bar outlines indicate theoretical predictions.
The result overlaps with the corresponding one reported for source γ24 ,
within one standard deviation. As was the case for γ24 , uncertainties have
been estimated through Monte Carlo simulations and correspond, respec-
tively, to poissonian and wave-plate angle errors.
6.4.3 6-photon source – γ 6

In the setup depicted in Fig. 6.7, the green PBS where modes 3 and 4
meet is mounted on a vertical translation stage. When the PBS is lifted out
of the beam path, we can block mode 3, and mode 4 thus interferes with
72
modes 1 and 2 further down the setup, at the following PBS. This process
enables the generation of |GHZ 6 i quantum states. In the case of six qubits,
a full state tomography would require 36 = 729 measurements. To obtain an
uncertainty of the order of 1% in the fidelity, each measurement would need
to last on the order of an hour, which clearly makes the full state tomography
approach unfeasible. Once again then, we resort to operator D and Eq.
(1.25) to estimate the state fidelity. This approach requires measuring the
following seven operators:
e ⊗6 = |Hi hH|⊗6 + |V i hV |⊗6 ,
Z
√ !⊗6
3σx + σy
M0⊗6 = σx⊗6 , M1⊗6 = ,
2
√ !⊗6
σx + 3σy (6.12)
M2⊗6 = , M3⊗6 = σy⊗6 ,
2
√ !⊗6 √ !⊗6
−σx + 3σy − 3σx + σy
M4⊗6 = , M5⊗6 = .
2 2
We have measured each setting for two hours at a rate of approximately
1.2 6-photon coincidences per√minute. The resulting fidelity with state
(|HHHHHHi + |VVVVVV i)/ 2, corrected for accidental events, was es-
timated at 76.1 +1.7 +0.2
−1.8 −0.2 %, and results of all seven operators are reported
in Fig. 6.17.
1
Experimental result
0.5
-0.5
-1
Ze⊗6 M0⊗6 M1⊗6 M2⊗6 M3⊗6 M4⊗6 M5⊗6
Figure 6.17: Experimental values, with uncertainties, for measurement op-

erators in Eq. (6.12), as measured for source γ 6 . The bar outlines indicate
theoretical predictions.
As for the 4-photon sources, uncertainties were estimated from Monte

Carlo simulations, and correspond to statistical (poissonian) and systematic
(wave-plate angle) errors respectively.
73
6.5 Comparison with literature
In the interest of comparing our multi-photon entanglement source with
other works in literature, I will consider the already mentioned references
[12; 14; 15], in addition to a previous source realised in our research group
and reported in references [68; 69]. While all six experiments aimed at gen-
erating entangled states, reference [68] did not target the maximally entan-
gled GHZ state, but a different rotationally invariant, non-maximally entan-
gled state. Moreover, rather than working with first-order SPDC, the setup
took advantage of third-order events to generate six entangled photons. Tab.
6.3 reports a streamlined comparison of the different setups.
This work [12] [14] [15] [68]

Crystals 2xBBO 4xBBO 10xBBO 5xBiBO 1xBBO
SPDC type I II I II II
Pairs/W
9.3 · 106 1.2 · 107 1.2 · 107 4 · 106 1.6 · 106
(RP · frep )
Collection
0.18 0.25 0.42 0.38 0.17
efficiency
Max HOM
0.91 0.83 0.91 NA –
visibility
Fid: |GHZ 4 i 0.907(1) NA 0.833(4) NA 0.919(2)a
at rate 15 Hz NA 6 kHz NA 0.8 Hz
Fid: |GHZ 6 i 0.76(2) NA 0.71(2) NA 0.88(3)a
at rate 0.02 Hz NA 39 Hz NA 1 mHz
a Ref.
[68] did not target |GHZ N i states.
NA: result is not publicly available.
Table 6.3: Comparison of the performance of the multi-photon entanglement

source reported in this work with the state-of-the-art experiments found in
literature, and a previous source built in our lab.
First of all, it should be noted that our design employs only two non-
linear crystals, which is a fraction of those used by the other setups for
|GHZi state generation [12; 14; 15]. This is an enormous experimental ad-
vantage when initially setting up the experiment. It also makes the setup
more compact and arguably more stable in time. Moving on along Tab.
6.3, our source shows a remarkably lower overall collection efficiency com-
74
pared with references [14; 15]. The extremely high efficiency reported in
reference [14] is very likely due to the SPDC crystals emitting Gaussian-
distributed, collinear beams, which have much better mode-matching into
SMFs. According to the authors of reference [15] instead, they were able
to dramatically improve previous results thanks to the reduced walk-off of
BiBO crystals compared to BBO, and by using shorter crystals. In terms
of rate of pair production however, our source is roughly on par with, or
above, the others reported. Both brightness and collection efficiency were
improved compared to previous efforts in our lab (in reference [68]). In-
distinguishability of independent photons, as measured through HOM in-
terference, turned out to be as high as the best of the works considered in
the comparison.
With regards to fidelity of state preparation, comparing different results
is a delicate matter, since higher fidelity may be achieved by decreasing
pump power, at the cost however of an exponentially decreased generation
rate. With that in mind, the currently available results referring to |GHZ 4 i
and |GHZ 6 i show that fidelities higher than reported in other works can be
achieved in our setup, although at lower generation rates. More data needs
to be gathered in order to compare bigger states and fidelity at different
rates.
6.5.1 Future outlook

From the comparison above, it is clear that the parameter which needs im-
proving the most in our source is the photon collection efficiency ξ . Such
an improvement would dramatically increase the generation rate, for a given
state fidelity. As an example, we can see in Fig. 6.18 the 8-photon rate as
predicted by Eq. (6.6), as function of both ξ and pump power. To have
statistically significant results in acceptable measurement times of several
hours, a rate on the order of 10 8-photon coincidences per hour is required.
Such a rate falls in the grey areas on the top-right corner of Fig. 6.18. ξ
greater than 0.2 is necessary to access that area, a requirement that has not
yet been met by our setup at the time of writing this thesis, and which pre-
vented us from characterising source γ 8 .
A quick (and very expensive) way to achieve this would be by using
more efficient single-photon detectors. As an example, superconducting
nanowire single-photon detectors (also known as SNSPDs) are currently
available with efficiency that exceeds 90% [70]. In our setup, such an up-
grade would increase ξ to about 0.3. Another approach would consist in
exploring the relation between ξ and SPDC crystal thickness, possibly with
both BBO and BiBO crystals. A similar analysis lead to dramatic improve-
75
Figure 6.18: 8-photon rates as function of both pump power and collection
efficiency ξ , as estimated from Eq. (6.6). The dependence on RP is substituted
with that on pump power using the linear fit of experimental data in Fig. 6.8.
ments in reference [15]. The combination of higher efficiency detectors and

improved collection efficiency would also enable the use of all five photon
pairs to generate |GHZ 10 i states.
76
7. Summary and outlook
In this thesis, I have outlined the most important results obtained in Papers
I-III. These works underline two crucial aspects of the current landscape
in quantum information: the need for reliable and reproducible results for
applications, and the possibility of a new level of security and certification
thanks to physical constraints and minimal assumptions.
In discussing Paper I, we have seen how ever-present Bell tests can
run into troubles when experimenters assume fair-sampling. The effects of
this issue, that we named apparent signalling, include distorting results and
invalidating conclusions. We have therefore experimentally investigated the
causes behind apparent signalling, and proposed effective ways of testing
and solving them.
In Papers II and III, we have explored the recent notions of device-
independence and self-testing. These outstanding concepts aim at drawing
conclusions from experimental data with minimal assumptions on the de-
vices used to collect it. Because they rely on trusting the laws of quantum
mechanics, they are arguably the next step in quantum information’s path
to maturity. That is, after coming to terms with the rejection of classical
physics by means of Bell’s theorem. In the two papers, we employed the
techniques of device-independence and self-testing to successfully certify
non-projective and informationally complete generalised quantum measure-
ments. As we have seen in the introduction to Chapter 5, these measure-
ments are optimal in several different scenarios, and in higher dimension
are still the object of current fundamental research. In order to certify the
various properties of our experimental measures, we have taken two quite
different approaches, one relying on entangled qubits, and the other on her-
alded single qubits. These two options have different advantages and disad-
vantages which were discussed in Chapter 5.
Throughout the refinement of existing experiments and the develop-
ment of new ideas, photonic entanglement has remained an omnipresent
resource in quantum information protocols. The need for better and more
complex multipartite entangled states, for both fundamental studies and
applications as quantum computation, has pushed us towards the devel-
opment of a source of multi-photon entanglement based on spontaneous-
parametric down-conversion. The original design solutions we employed
77
were described in Chapter 6, together with thorough experimental charac-
terisation, and they will be at the core of the results in Paper IV, which
is still in the works at the time of writing. An extensive comparison with
other state-of-the-art multi-photon sources found in literature indicates our
source as a valid alternative, while being experimentally far less complex.
Finally, while more work is still needed to fully characterise the entangle-
ment source, potential improvements have already been identified and will
be investigated in the near future.
78
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Photonic Multipartite Entanglement

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Photonic multipartite

Doctoral Thesis in Physics at Stockholm University, Sweden 2020

ISBN print 978-91-7911-030-7

Thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics

©Paper II: 2020 Optical Society of America.

Typeset by the author using LaTeX.

Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2020

Distributor: Department of Physics, Stockholm University

We are currently witnessing a fundamental change in the field of quantum

It is not a coincidence that most acknowledgement sections in dissertations

List of Papers xii

Author’s contribution xiii

Relevant papers not included in the thesis xiv

List of Tables xvii

1 Bits of quantum information 1

5 Certifying a generalised quantum measurement 41

6 Multi-photon entanglement source 51

7 Summary and outlook 77

PAPER I: Avoiding apparent signaling in Bell tests for applications

PAPER II: Experimental certification of an informationally complete

PAPER III: Self-testing nonprojective quantum measurements in pre-

PAPER IV: Experimental observation of photonic multipartite entan-

Reprints were made with permission from the publishers.

PAPER IV: M. Sadiq, M. Nawareg and M. Bourennane designed the ex-

Experimental quantum multiparty communication protocols

1.1 A vector on a Bloch sphere . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

6.1 Simple scheme of pump light preparation. . . . . . . . . . 54

3.1 Wave-plate angle settings are reported for Pauli measure-

5.1 Comparison of the main features of the entanglement-based

6.1 List of multi-photon entanglement sources found in the setup

Vi bevittnar numera en grundläggande förändring inom kvantinformations-

In this introductory chapter we will quickly go through the main ingredients

1.1 The qubit

Figure 1.1: A vector on a Bloch sphere

1.2 Multi-qubit systems

complex quantum system. Such a system lives in a bigger Hilbert space

|ψi = α |00i + β |01i + γ |10i + δ |11i , (1.6)

with the normalisation condition |α|2 + |β |2 + |γ|2 + |δ |2 = 1. In matrix

1.3 Mixed states

where each pi represents the probability (in the ensemble of m states) to

1.4 Quantum measurements

|ψi = ∑ ci |ai i (1.11)

where complex coefficients ci = hai |ψi are probability amplitudes, with

hAiρ = tr (Aρ) ≡ ∑ (Aρ)ii . (1.12)

According to the (most widely accepted) Copenhagen interpretation of

1.4.1 Projective measurements

where Ei is a projector onto its corresponding eigenspace of E, with eigen-

1.4.2 Generalised measurements

P(i)|ψi = hψ| Fi† Fi |ψi = hψ| Ei |ψi . (1.17)

P(i)ρ = tr (ρEi ) . (1.18)

1.5 Quantum state fidelity

In case of pure states, the fidelity is equivalent to the transition proba-

ρ = ∑ pi ρi1 ⊗ ρi2 ⊗ ... ⊗ ρin , (1.24)

1.6.1 Entanglement witness

where Mk = cos(πk/N)σx +sin(πk/N)σy and k = 0, 1, ..., N −1. A negative

1.7 Bell states

2.1 The EPR paradox

2.2 Bell’s theorem and the CHSH inequality

where ρ(λ ) is the probability distribution of λ and A and B are averages

which can finally be rewritten as

Bell’s theorem proves that if a theory fails to satisfy Eq. (2.2), it is

Detection loophole Because of imperfections in experimental setups - at-

Cryptography One of the first, and most fascinating still, applications of