We address the problem of characterizing the steerability of quantum states under restrictive measurement scenarios, i.e., the problem of determining whether a quantum state can demonstrate steering when subjected to $N$ measurements of $k$ outcomes. We consider the cases of either general positive operator-valued measures (POVMs) or specific kinds of measurements (e.g., projective or symmetric). We propose general methods to calculate lower and upper bounds for the white-noise robustness of a $d$-dimensional quantum state under different measurement scenarios that are also applicable to the study of the noise robustness of the incompatibility of sets of unknown qudit measurements. We show that some mutually unbiased bases, symmetric informationally complete measurements, and other symmetric choices of measurements are not optimal for steering the isotropic states and provide candidates for the most incompatible sets of measurements in each case. Finally, we provide numerical evidence that nonprojective POVMs do not improve over projective ones for this task.

• Received 8 May 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.96.022110