Intrinsic randomness under general quantum measurements

Quantum measurements can produce randomness arising from the uncertainty principle. When measuring a state with von Neumann measurements, the intrinsic randomness can be quantified by the quantum coherence of the state on the measurement basis. Unlike projection measurements, there are additional and possibly hidden degrees of freedom in apparatus for generic measurements. We propose an adversary scenario for general measurements with arbitrary input states, based on which, we characterize the intrinsic randomness. Interestingly, we discover that under certain measurements, such as the symmetric and information-complete measurement, all states have nonzero randomness, inspiring a new design of source-independent random number generators without state characterization. Furthermore, our results show that intrinsic randomness can quantify coherence under general measurements, which generalizes the result in the standard resource theory of state coherence. The work has been submitted to Physical Review Letters.

Preprint

Recommended citation: Dai, H., Chen, B., Zhang, X., & Ma, X. (2023). Intrinsic randomness under general quantum measurements. Physical Review Research, 5(3), 033081.