Most incompatible measurements and sum-of-squares optimisation

Abstract Measurement incompatibility, or joint measurability, is a cornerstone of quantum theory and a useful resource. For finite-dimensional systems, quantifying this resource and establishing universal bounds valid for all measurements is a long-standing problem. In this work, we exhibit analytical universal parent measurements giving access to bounds that beat the state of the art. In particular, we can show that, for relevant robustnesses, sets of anticommuting observables give rise to the most incompatible dichotomic measurements. We also formalise the construction of such universal parent measurements in the framework of sum-of-squares optimisation and obtain preliminary numerical results demonstrating the power of the method by improving on our own analytical values. All results find direct application for demonstrating genuine high-dimensional steering, that is, certifying the dimensionality of a quantum system in a one-sided device-independent manner.