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Consider the standard 2-2 Bell scenario, with two parties each one choosing between two measurement settings, with each measurement setting leading to one of two possible measurement outcomes. Consider the space of possible corresponding behaviours, that is, conditional probability distributions $(p(ab|xy))_{a,b,x,y\in\{0,1\}}$.

As also discussed in What is the no-signaling set and how can it be related to other types of correlations? and What are the vertices of the no-signalling set $\mathcal{NS}$?, it is standard in this context to distinguish between different classes of behaviours. I'll mention in particular the set $\mathcal L$ of local behaviours, the set $\mathcal Q$ of quantum behaviours, and the set $\mathcal{NS}$ of no-signalling behaviours.

A standard representation of the relations between these sets, given in the review by Brunner et al., is

enter image description here

One notable feature of this is that while $\mathcal L$ and $\mathcal{NS}$ are polytopes, that is, the convex hull of a finite number of points, $\mathcal Q$ is represented as having a boundary that is non-flat in some sections.

I wouldn't call this feature surprising, but is there an easy way to see why this is the case?

glS
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1 Answers1

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So, the first comment is that we know that the quantum body itself is not a polytope because we may find cases in which the extremal points form a continuum of points instead of just a finite set of points. In this recent paper here they have even plotted sections of this body, and you can see the boundaries. In particular, the ones I liked the most are the elliptopes. The results there also show that this body cannot be a polytope. This is rigorously proved there in full detail, and I here outline a particular argument that might be more 'easy' as the question asks for.

One can see that for the restricted case, the quantum correlations satisfy the equation $1-x^2-y^2-z^2+2xyz \geq 0$ as in the above cited paper. The procedure is the following:

Let $c=(\langle A_1B_1\rangle,\langle A_1B_2\rangle,\langle A_2B_1\rangle,\langle A_2B_2\rangle) = (1,x,y,z)$. Now, since we have dichotomic measurements we can model $\langle A_iB_j \rangle = 2p(A_i=B_j)-1$. The set $p(A_i=B_j) = \text{Tr}(P^{A_i}_0 P^{B_j}_0)$ if we have set of outcomes $\{0,1\}$. All information in the correlations is then encoded in these traces.

Let's then make $\langle A_1B_1\rangle = 1$. We may then fix $P_0^{A_1} = P_0^{B_1} = \vert 0 \rangle \langle 0 \vert$. Instead of writing the projector I can equivalently write the vectors $\vert A_2^0 \rangle, \vert B_2^0 \rangle$ for the remaining states $P_0^{A_2} = \vert A_2^0 \rangle \langle A_2^0 \vert$ and same for $P_0^{B_2}$. I want then to optimize this section of the quantum body. In general, correlations can be described if we choose the vectors,

$$\vert A_2^0 \rangle = \cos(\beta)\vert 0 \rangle + \sin(\beta)\vert 1 \rangle$$

$$\vert B_2^0 \rangle = \cos(\gamma)\vert 0 \rangle + \sin(\gamma)\cos(\alpha)e^{i\theta}\vert 1 \rangle + \sin(\gamma)\sin(\alpha)\vert 2 \rangle$$

In this description, CHSH becomes $$1 \geq c_{12}+c_{21}-c_{22} = \langle A_1B_2\rangle + \langle A_2B_1\rangle-\langle A_2B_2\rangle (A_1=B_1) \\= 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0)-1 + 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0)-1-(2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0)-1) \\\implies 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0)-1 + 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0)-1-(2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0)-1) \leq 1 \\\implies 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0)-1 + 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0)-2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0)\leq 1 \\\implies 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0) + 2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0)-2\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0)\leq 2 \\\implies \text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0) + \text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0)-\text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0)\leq \frac{1}{2}2 \\\implies \text{Tr}(P^{A_1}_0 P^{B_2}_0) + \text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_1}_0) - \text{Tr}(P^{A_2}_0 P^{B_2}_0) \leq 1 \implies f \leq 1$$ but this implies that the maximum quantum set can be obtained from maximizing the CHSH term $f$ for this fact of the convex body. Meaning we may maximize the quantity:

$$f(\alpha,\beta,\gamma,\theta) = cos^2(\gamma)+\cos^2(\beta)-\cos^2(\gamma)\cos^2(\beta)+\sin^2(\gamma)\sin^2(\beta)\sin^2(\alpha)-2\sin(\gamma)\cos(\gamma)\sin(\beta)\cos(\beta)\sin(\alpha)\cos(\theta)$$

This can be done analytically (see the appendix of this paper here, published here) and the resulting equation is an equation that is not a polytope but corresponds to a continuous boundary curve, which is the same as the elliptope curve, but now for the traces instead of for the correlations (but this is a dual maximization representation for this particular case).

R.W
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