Experimentally Certifying Kochen-Specker Set with the Maximally Mixed State

Abstract: Certifying Kochen-Specker (KS) set is a task of certifying a set of uncharacterized projectors as desired KS set. This work demonstrates an improved scheme that enables this certification using only a maximally mixed state, rather than traversing over all states, making it experimental feasible. In this scheme, outcomes obtained from sequential measurements are used for the evaluation of the worst result and its certification threshold, based on the characteristics of maximally mixed state and a semi-definite program. Experimentally, a group of projectors closely approximating the KS set Peres-24 is certified in an optical system, highlighting the feasibility of this scheme in certifying KS set. Furthermore, a quantitative analysis is presented by manually adding errors to the optical system, demonstrating a strict level of experimental imperfection in achieving successful certification. These results offer a new perspective on characterizing measurements from quantum devices.