Work

Robust Certification of Non-Projective Measurements: Theory and Experiment

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Determining the conditions under which positive operator-valued measures (POVMs), the most general class of quantum measurements, outperform projective measurements remains a challenging and largely unresolved problem. Of particular interest are projectively simulable POVMs, which can be realized through probabilistic mixtures of projective measurements and therefore offer no advantage over projective schemes. Characterizing the boundary between simulable and non-simulable POVMs is, however, a difficult task, and existing tools either fail to scale efficiently, provide limited experimental feasibility, or work only for specific POVMs. Here, we introduce and demonstrate a general method to certify non-simulability of a POVM by introducing a complete hierarchy of semidefinite programs. It provides upper bounds on the non-simulability measure of critical visibility of arbitrary POVMs, which are tight in many cases and outperform previously known criteria. We experimentally certify the non-simulability of two- and three-dimensional POVMs using a trapped-ion qudit quantum processor by constructing non-simulability witnesses and introducing a modification of our framework that makes them robust against state preparation errors. Finally, we extend our results to the setting where an additional ancilla system is available.

Source: PRX Quantum

DOI: 10.1103/nsjr-vnmg