English

Analytic Qubit Separation between POVMs and Projective Measurements

Quantum Physics 2026-08-02 v1 Operator Algebras

Abstract

Generalized measurements can be implemented projectively after enlarging the Hilbert space, but this dilation changes the available local dimension. We construct a Bell functional with rational coefficients that separates the two measurement models at local dimension two. An explicit three-outcome qubit positive-operator-valued measure with rational matrix entries attains 22+1/1002\sqrt2+1/100. On the other hand, all qubit-projective strategies are bounded by 22+5/250+2/324002\sqrt2+\sqrt5/250+\sqrt2/32400, giving a fully analytic certified gap greater than 1/10001/1000. To our knowledge, this is the first fully analytic Bell-functional separation between qubit POVMs and qubit projective measurements over arbitrary shared two-qubit states. Lean certificate for the separation theorem is provided for completeness. Separately, an exact level-3 noncommutative sum-of-squares certificate proves that the explicit qubit strategy attains the unrestricted finite-dimensional tensor-product quantum optimum.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2608.01317,
  title  = {Analytic Qubit Separation between POVMs and Projective Measurements},
  author = {Lin Zhu and Ranyiliu Chen and Xin Wang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2608.01317},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

9 pages. Comments are welcome