Entanglement Detection with Imprecise Measurements

Abstract

We investigate entanglement detection when the local measurements only nearly correspond to those intended. This corresponds to a scenario in which measurement devices are not perfectly controlled, but nevertheless operate with bounded inaccuracy. We formalize this through an operational notion of inaccuracy that can be estimated directly in the lab. To demonstrate the relevance of this approach, we show that small magnitudes of inaccuracy can significantly compromise several well-known entanglement witnesses. For two arbitrary-dimensional systems, we show how to compute tight corrections to a family of standard entanglement witnesses due to any given level of measurement inaccuracy. We also develop semidefinite programming methods to bound correlations in these scenarios.