All-versus-nothing proof of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering

Abstract

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering is a form of quantum nonlocality intermediate between entanglement and Bell nonlocality. Although Schro¨dinger already mooted the idea in 1935, steering still defies a complete understanding. In analogy to ‘‘all-versus-nothing’’ proofs of Bell nonlocality, here we present a proof of steering without inequalities rendering the detection of correlations leading to a violation of steering inequalities unnecessary. We show that, given any two-qubit entangled state, the existence of certain projective measurement by Alice so that Bob’s normalized conditional states can be regarded as two different pure states provides a criterion for Alice-to-Bob steerability. A steering inequality equivalent to the all-versus-nothing proof is also obtained. Our result clearly demonstrates that there exist many quantum states which do not violate any previously known steering inequality but are indeed steerable. Our method offers advantages over the existing methods for experimentally testing steerability, and sheds new light on the asymmetric steering problem.