Quantitative and Optimal Device-Independent Lower Bounds on Detection Efficiency

TL;DR

This paper establishes tight, quantitative lower bounds on detector efficiency for Bell tests in a device-independent setting, incorporating dark counts and deriving analytical bounds based on no-signaling behaviors.

Contribution

It provides the first tight numerical bounds on detector efficiency for Bell tests and introduces analytical bounds using no-signaling behaviors, considering dark counts.

Findings

Tight lower bounds on detector efficiency for Bell violations.

Analytical efficiency bounds based on no-signaling behaviors.

Inclusion of dark count effects in efficiency requirements.

Abstract

This paper examines a quantitative and optimal lower bound on the detector efficiency in a (2,2,2) Bell experiment within a fully device-independent framework, whereby the detectors used in the experiment are uncharacterized. We provide a tight lower bound on the minimum efficiency required to observe a desired Bell-CHSH violation using the Navascu\'es-Pironio-Ac\'in (NPA) hierarchy, confirming tightness up to four decimal places with numerical optimization over explicit quantum realizations. We then introduce the effect of dark counts and demonstrate how to quantify the minimum required efficiency to observe a desired CHSH violation with an increasing dark count error. Finally, to obtain an analytical closed-form expression of the minimum efficiency, we consider the set of no-signaling behaviors that satisfy the Tsirelson bound, which are easier to characterize than the quantum set. Using such behaviors, we find a simple closed-form expression for a lower bound on the minimum efficiency which is monotonically increasing with the CHSH violation, though the analytically obtained lower bounds are meaningfully below the numerically tight lower bound.