March 2024

Relativization is naturally functorial

In this note, we provide some categorical perspectives on the relativization construction arising from quantum measurement theory in the presence of symmetries and occupying a central place in the operational approach to quantum reference frames. This construction provides, for any quantum system, a quantum channel from the system’s algebra to the invariant algebra on the composite system also encompassing the chosen reference, contingent upon a choice of the pointer observable. These maps are understood as relativizing observables on systems upon the specification of a quantum reference frame. We begin by extending the construction to systems modelled on subspaces of algebras of operators to then define a functor taking a pair consisting of a reference frame and a system and assigning to them a subspace of relative operators defined in terms of an image of the corresponding relativization map. When a single frame and equivariant channels are considered, the relativization maps can be understood as a natural transformation. Upon fixing a system, the functor provides a novel kind of frame transformation that we call external. Results achieved provide a deeper structural understanding of the framework of interest and point towards its categorification and potential application to local systems of algebraic quantum field theories.

Causal Graph Dynamics and Kan Extensions

On the one side, the formalism of Global Transformations comes with the claim of capturing any transformation of space that is local, synchronous and deterministic.The claim has been proven for different classes of models such as mesh refinements from computer graphics, Lindenmayer systems from morphogenesis modeling and cellular automata from biological, physical and parallel computation modeling.The Global Transformation formalism achieves this by using category theory for its genericity, and more precisely the notion of Kan extension to determine the global behaviors based on the local ones.On the other side, Causal Graph Dynamics describe the transformation of port graphs in a synchronous and deterministic way and has not yet being tackled.In this paper, we show the precise sense in which the claim of Global Transformations holds for them as well.This is done by showing different ways in which they can be expressed as Kan extensions, each of them highlighting different features of Causal Graph Dynamics.Along the way, this work uncovers the interesting class of Monotonic Causal Graph Dynamics and their universality among General Causal Graph Dynamics.

Spinfoams, $gamma$-duality and parity violation in primordial gravitational waves

The Barbero-Immirzi parameter $gamma$ appears as a coupling constant in the spinfoam dynamics of loop quantum gravity and can be understood as a measure of gravitational parity violation via a duality rotation. We investigate an effective field theory for gravity and a scalar field, with dynamics given by a $gamma$-dual action obtained via a duality rotation of a parity-non-violating one. The resulting relation between the coupling constants of parity-even and parity-odd higher-curvature terms is determined by $gamma$, opening the possibility of its measurement in the semiclassical regime. For a choice of $gamma$-dual effective action, we study cosmic inflation and show that the observation of a primordial tensor polarization, together with the tensor tilt and the tensor-to-scalar ratio, provides a measurement of the Barbero-Immirzi parameter and, therefore, of the scale of discreteness of the quantum geometry of space.

Information-theoretic derivation of energy and speed bounds

Information-theoretic insights have proven fruitful in many areas of quantum physics. But can the fundamental dynamics of quantum systems be derived from purely information-theoretic principles, without resorting to Hilbert space structures such as unitary evolution and self-adjoint observables? Here we provide a model where the dynamics originates from a condition of informational non-equilibrium, the deviation of the system’s state from a reference state associated to a field of identically prepared systems. Combining this idea with three basic information-theoretic principles, we derive a notion of energy that captures the main features of energy in quantum theory: it is observable, bounded from below, invariant under time-evolution, in one-to-one correspondence with the generator of the dynamics, and quantitatively related to the speed of state changes. Our results provide an information-theoretic reconstruction of the Mandelstam-Tamm bound on the speed of quantum evolutions, establishing a bridge between dynamical and information-theoretic notions.

Local fraction in Static Causal Orders

In this Letter, we introduce a notion of local fraction for experiments taking place against arbitrary static causal backgrounds—greatly generalising previous results on no-signalling scenarios—and we explicitly formulate a linear program to compute this quantity. We derive a free characterisation of causal functions which allows us to efficiently construct the matrices required to perform concrete calculations. We demonstrate our techniques by analysing the local fraction of a novel example involving two Bell tests in interleaved causal order.

An Interview with Jeremy Butterfield: At the Crossroads Between Physics and Philosophy

In a recent interview, Jeremy Butterfield, a prominent philosopher of science, shared his analysis of the evolution of this discipline over the decades. Butterfield highlighted the emergence of the philosophy of physics, thanks notably to revolutionary developments such as Bell’s theorem. This theorem, formulated in the 1960s by physicist John Bell, marked a major turning …

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A de Finetti theorem for quantum causal structures

What does it mean for a causal structure to be `unknown’? Can we even talk about `repetitions’ of an experiment without prior knowledge of causal relations? And under what conditions can we say that a set of processes with arbitrary, possibly indefinite, causal structure are independent and identically distributed? Similar questions for classical probabilities, quantum states, and quantum channels are beautifully answered by so-called “de Finetti theorems”, which connect a simple and easy-to-justify condition — symmetry under exchange — with a very particular multipartite structure: a mixture of identical states/channels. Here we extend the result to processes with arbitrary causal structure, including indefinite causal order and multi-time, non-Markovian processes applicable to noisy quantum devices. The result also implies a new class of de Finetti theorems for quantum states subject to a large class of linear constraints, which can be of independent interest.

Fast classical simulation of quantum circuits via parametric rewriting in the ZX-calculus

The ZX-calculus is an algebraic formalism that allows quantum computations to be simplified via a small number of simple graphical rewrite rules. Recently, it was shown that, when combined with a family of “sum-over-Cliffords” techniques, the ZX-calculus provides a powerful tool for classical simulation of quantum circuits. However, for several important classical simulation tasks, such as computing the probabilities associated with many measurement outcomes of a single quantum circuit, this technique results in reductions over many very similar diagrams, where much of the same computational work is repeated. In this paper, we show that the majority of this work can be shared across branches, by developing reduction strategies that can be run parametrically on diagrams with boolean free parameters. As parameters only need to be fixed after the bulk of the simplification work is already done, we show that it is possible to perform the final stage of classical simulation quickly utilising a high degree of GPU parallelism. Using these methods, we demonstrate speedups upwards of 100x for certain classical simulation tasks vs. the non-parametric approach.

A complete logic for causal consistency

The $mathrm{Caus}[-]$ construction takes a base category of “raw materials” and builds a category of higher order causal processes, that is a category whose types encode causal (a.k.a. signalling) constraints between collections of systems. Notable examples are categories of higher-order stochastic maps and higher-order quantum channels. Well-typedness in $mathrm{Caus}[-]$ corresponds to a composition of processes being causally consistent, in the sense that any choice of local processes of the prescribed types yields an overall process respecting causality constraints. It follows that closed processes always occur with probability 1, ruling out e.g. causal paradoxes arising from time loops. It has previously been shown that $mathrm{Caus}[mathcal{C}]$ gives a model of MLL+MIX and BV logic, hence these logics give sufficient conditions for causal consistency, but they fail to provide a complete characterisation. In this follow-on work, we introduce graph types as a tool to examine causal structures over graphs in this model. We explore their properties, standard forms, and equivalent definitions; in particular, a process obeys all signalling constraints of the graph iff it is expressible as an affine combination of factorisations into local causal processes connected according to the edges of the graph. The properties of graph types are then used to prove completeness for causal consistency of a new causal logic that conservatively extends pomset logic. The crucial extra ingredient is a notion of distinguished atoms that correspond to first-order states, which only admit a flow of information in one direction. Using the fact that causal logic conservatively extends pomset logic, we finish by giving a physically-meaningful interpretation to a separating statement between pomset and BV.