Robust hyperentanglement self testing

Abstract

Hyperentanglement, which refers to entanglement encoded in two or more independent degrees of freedom (DOFs), is a valuable resource for the future high-capacity quantum network. Certifying hyperentanglement sources work as intended is critical for the hyperentanglement-based quantum information tasks. Self testing is the strongest certification method for quantum state and measurement under minimal assumptions, even without any knowledge of the devices' inner workings. However, the existing self testing protocols all focus on one-DOF entanglement, which cannot self test the multi-DOF entanglement. In the paper, we propose a hyperentanglement self testing framework. We take the self testing for the polarization-spatial-mode hyperentangled Bell states as an example. The self testing is based on the violation of two-dimension CHSH test in each DOF independently. The two-step swap isometry circuits are proposed for self testing the entanglement in spatial-mode and polarization DOFs, respectively. All the sixteen polarization-spatial-mode hyperentangled Bell states can be self tested. Our hyperentanglement self testing framework has three advantages. First, it is a general hyperentanglement self testing framework, and can be extended to self test multi-DOF hyperentanglement and multipartite hyperentanglement. Second, it can provide the robust hyperentanglement self testing and establish the relation between the lower bound of fidelity and the imperfect violation of Bell-like inequality in each DOF. Third, it is feasible with current experimental technology. Our hyperentanglement self testing framework provides a promising way to certify complex hyperentanglement sources, and has potential application in future high-capacity quantum network.