Experimental implementation of certification protocols for quantum technologies

Within the last decades, several quantum resource-based protocols have been designed, with a wide range of applications. In this context, it would be desirable to dispose of certification procedures to discriminate whether a device claiming to perform a quantum task is truly exploiting quantum behaviors, and not just simulating them, by revealing the presence of non-classical correlations.

In this talk, I will focus on my latest work on this subject. More in detail, I will first present a protocol for the self-testing of states generated by two different quantum networks, namely a protocol that does not rely on any assumption about the internal functioning of the apparatus used to generate and measure the states. Then, I will focus on a different network, a scenario called instrumental, where no violation of Bell-like inequalities is achievable when all variables are binary. However, it was recently demonstrated that, even in this case, it is still possible to reveal quantum effects by quantifying the direct causal influence among the involved variables. In this work, we experimentally tested this phenomenon for the first time, opening the way to a novel class of applications, for example in the fields of quantum cryptography and communication, as well as in the certification of quantum technologies.