Self-tested quantum information processing provides a means for doing useful
information processing with untrusted quantum apparatus. Previous work was
limited to performing computations and protocols in real Hilbert spaces, which
is not a serious obstacle if one is only interested in final measurement
statistics being correct (for example, getting the correct factors of a large
number after running Shor's factoring algorithm). This limitation was shown by
McKague et al. to be fundamental, since there is no way to experimentally
distinguish any quantum experiment from a special simulation using states and
operators with only real coefficients.
In this paper, we show that one can still do a meaningful self-test of
quantum apparatus with complex amplitudes. In particular, we define a family of
simulations of quantum experiments, based on complex conjugation, with two
interesting properties. First, we are able to define a self-test which may be
passed only by states and operators that are equivalent to simulations within
the family. This extends work of Mayers and Yao and Magniez et al. in
self-testing of quantum apparatus, and includes a complex measurement. Second,
any of the simulations in the family may be used to implement a secure 6-state
QKD protocol, which was previously not known to be implementable in a
self-tested framework.Comment: To appear in proceedings of TQC 201