One of the fundamental problems of modern physics is how the classical world, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and the whole irreversibility emerges from the quantum reality with reversible evolution. This relates to the problem of measurement transforming quantum, non-copyable data, towards intersubjective, copyable classical knowledge. We use the quantum state discrimination to show in a central system model how it's evolution leads to the broadcasting of the classical information. We analyze the process of orthogonalization and decoherence, their time scales and dependence on the environment.

We present a new quantum communication complexity protocol, the promise-quantum random access code, which allows us to introduce a new measure of unbiasedness for bases of Hilbert spaces. The proposed measure possesses a clear operational meaning and can be used to investigate whether a specific number of mutually unbiased bases exist in a given dimension by employing semidefinite programming techniques.

We study in details decoherence process of a spin register, coupled to a spin environment. We use recently developed methods of information transfer study in open quantum systems to analyze information flow between the register and its environment. We show that there are regimes when not only the register decoheres effectively to a classical bit string, but this bit string is redundantly encoded in the environment, making it available to multiple observations. This process is more subtle than in a case of a single qubit due to possible presence of protected subspaces: Decoherence free subspaces and, so called, orthogonalization free subspaces. We show that this leads to a rich structure of coherence loss/protection in the asymptotic state of the register and a part of its environment. We formulate a series of examples illustrating these structures.

In this paper we construct a semi-device-independent protocol able to certify the presence of the generalized measurements. We show robustness of the protocol and conclude that it allows for experimental realisations using current technology.

In this paper we investigate properties of several randomness generation protocols in the device independent framework. Using Bell-type inequalities it is possible to certify that the numbers generated by an untrusted device are indeed random. We present a selection of certificates which guarantee two bits of randomness for each run of the experiment in the noiseless case and require the parties to share a maximally entangled state. To compare them we study their efficiency in the presence of white noise. We find that for different amounts of noise different operators are optimal for certifying most randomness. Therefore the vendor of the device should use different protocols depending on the amount of noise expected to occur. Another of our results that we find particularly interesting is that using a single Bell operator as a figure of merit is rarely optimal.

Collaborative communication tasks such as random access codes (RACs) employing quantum resources have manifested great potential in enhancing information processing capabilities beyond the classical limitations. The two quantum variants of RACs, namely, quantum random access code (QRAC) and the entanglement-assisted random access code (EARAC), have demonstrated equal prowess for a number of tasks. However, there do exist specific cases where one outperforms the other. In this article, we study a family of 3 → 1 distributed RACs [19] and present its general construction of both the QRAC and the EARAC. We demonstrate that, depending on the function of inputs that is sought, if QRAC achieves the maximal success probability then EARAC fails to do so and vice versa.Moreover, a tripartite Bell-type inequality associated with the EARAC variants reveals the genuine multipartite nonlocality exhibited by our protocol. We conclude with an experimental realization of the 3 → 1 distributed QRAC that achieves higher success probabilities than the maximum possible with EARACs for a number of tasks.

In this paper we develop a method for investigating semi-device-independent randomness expansion protocols that was introduced in [Li et al. Phys. Rev. A 87, 020302(R) (2013)]. This method allows to lower-bound, with semi-definite programming, the randomness obtained from random number generators based on dimension witnesses. We also investigate the robustness of some randomness expanders using this method. We show the role of an assumption about the trace of the measurement operators and a way to avoid it. The method is also generalized to systems of arbitrary dimension, and for a more general form of dimension witnesses, than it the previous paper. Finally, we introduce a procedure of dimension witness reduction, which can be used to obtain from an existing witness a new one with higher amount of certifiable randomness. The presented methods finds an application for experiments [Ahrens et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 112, 140401 (2014)].

A physical theory is called non-local when observers can produce instantaneous effects over distant systems. Non-local theories rely on two fundamental effects: local uncertainty relations and steering of physical states at a distance. In quantum mechanics, the former one dominates the other in a well-known class of non-local games known as XOR games. In particular, optimal quantum strategies for XOR games are completely determined by the uncertainty principle alone. This breakthrough result has yielded the fundamental open question whether optimal quantum strategies are always restricted by local uncertainty principles, with entanglement-based steering playing no role. In this work, we provide a negative answer to the question, showing that both steering and uncertainty relations play a fundamental role in determining optimal quantum strategies for non-local games. Our theoretical findings are supported by an experimental implementation with entangled photons.