Experimental Verification of Entangled States in the Adversarial Scenario

Abstract: Efficient verification of entangled states is crucial to many applications in quantum information processing. However, the effectiveness of standard quantum state verification (QSV) is based on the condition of independent and identical distribution (IID), which impedes its applications in many practical scenarios. Here we demonstrate a defensive QSV protocol, which is effective in all kinds of non-IID scenarios, including the extremely challenging adversarial scenario. To this end, we build a high-speed preparation-and-measurement apparatus controlled by quantum random-number generators. Our experiments clearly show that standard QSV protocols often provide unreliable fidelity certificates in non-IID scenarios. In sharp contrast, the defensive QSV protocol based on a homogeneous strategy can provide reliable and nearly tight fidelity certificates at comparable high efficiency, even under malicious attacks. Moreover, our scheme is robust against the imperfections in a realistic experiment, which is very appealing to practical applications.