Observation of collective Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering in three-qubit systems

Collective Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering is a unique multipartite resource that enables the realization of more secure communication protocols. However, due to the lack of suitable experimental criteria, research on collective EPR steering has so far been limited to continuous variable systems. Here, we employ the coherence-based collective EPR steering criteria proposed by Mondal et al. [Phys. Rev. A 99, 012312 (2019)] and develop a semidefinite programming method to find the optimal measurement settings. Experimentally, we take the three-qubit generalized Greenberger-Horne-Zeilinger states and generalized $W$ states as examples, demonstrating that collective EPR steering can be observed by detecting the average ${l}_{1}$ norm of coherence of the steered subsystem. We also explored the effect of measurement settings on complementarity relations between different collective steering criteria, and established a connection between collective steering and coherence complementarity. Our paper fills a gap in the verification of collective steerability in discrete variable systems and reveals a profound connection between EPR steering and quantum coherence.