We consider the most general correlations that can be obtained by a group of parties whose causal relations are well defined, although possibly probabilistic and dependent on past parties' operations. We show that, for any fixed number of parties and inputs and outputs for each party, the set of such correlations forms a convex polytope, whose vertices correspond to deterministic strategies and whose (nontrivial) facets define so-called causal inequalities. We completely characterize the simplest tripartite polytope in terms of its facet inequalities, propose generalizations of some inequalities to scenarios with more parties, and show that our tripartite inequalities can be violated within the process matrix formalism, where quantum mechanics is locally valid but no global causal structure is assumed.
We consider the most general correlations that can be obtained by a group of parties whose causal relations are well defined, although possibly probabilistic and dependent on past parties' operations. We show that, for any fixed number of parties and inputs and outputs for each party, the set of such correlations forms a convex polytope, whose vertices correspond to deterministic strategies and whose (nontrivial) facets define so-called causal inequalities. We completely characterize the simplest tripartite polytope in terms of its facet inequalities, propose generalizations of some inequalities to scenarios with more parties, and show that our tripartite inequalities can be violated within the process matrix formalism, where quantum mechanics is locally valid but no global causal structure is assumed.
In a scenario where two parties share, act on and exchange some physical resource, the assumption that the parties' actions are ordered according to a definite causal structure yields constraints on the possible correlations that can be established. We show that the set of correlations that are compatible with a definite causal order forms a polytope, whose facets define causal inequalities . We fully characterize this causal polytope in the simplest case of bipartite correlations with binary inputs and outputs. We find two families of nonequivalent causal inequalities; both can be violated in the recently introduced framework of process matrices , which extends the standard quantum formalism by relaxing the implicit assumption of a fixed causal structure. Our work paves the way to a more systematic investigation of causal inequalities in a theory-independent way, and of their violation within the framework of process matrices.
The study of correlations with no definite causal order has revealed a rich structure emerging when more than two parties are involved. This motivates the consideration of multipartite "noncausal" correlations that cannot be realised even if noncausal resources are made available to a smaller number of parties. Here we formalise this notion: genuinely N-partite noncausal correlations are those that cannot be produced by grouping N parties into two or more subsets, where a causal order between the subsets exists. We prove that such correlations can be characterised as lying outside a polytope, whose vertices correspond to deterministic strategies and whose facets define what we call "2-causal" inequalities. We show that genuinely multipartite noncausal correlations arise within the process matrix formalism, where quantum mechanics holds locally but no global causal structure is assumed, although for some inequalities no violation was found. We further introduce two refined definitions that allow one to quantify, in different ways, to what extent noncausal correlations correspond to a genuinely multipartite resource.
The idea that events are equipped with a partial causal order is central to our understanding of physics in the tested regimes: given two pointlike events A and B , either A is in the causal past of B , B is in the causal past of A , or A and B are space-like separated. Operationally, the meaning of these order relations corresponds to constraints on the possible correlations between experiments performed in the vicinities of the respective events: if A is in the causal past of B , an experimenter at A could signal to an experimenter at B but not the other way around, while if A and B are space-like separated, no signaling is possible in either direction. In the context of a concrete physical theory, the correlations compatible with a given causal configuration may obey further constraints. For instance, space-like correlations in quantum mechanics arise from local measurements on joint quantum states, while time-like correlations are established via quantum channels. Similarly to other variables, however, the causal order of a set of events could be random, and little is understood about the constraints that causality implies in this case. A main difficulty concerns the fact that the order of events can now generally depend on the operations performed at the locations of these events, since, for instance, an operation at A could influence the order in which B and C occur in A ’s future. So far, no formal theory of causality compatible with such dynamical causal order has been developed. Apart from being of fundamental interest in the context of inferring causal relations, such a theory is imperative for understanding recent suggestions that the causal order of events in quantum mechanics can be indefinite. Here, we develop such a theory in the general multipartite case. Starting from a background-independent definition of causality, we derive an iteratively formulated canonical decomposition of multipartite causal correlations. For a fixed number of settings and outcomes for each party, these correlations form a polytope whose facets define causal inequalities. The case of quantum correlations in this paradigm is captured by the process matrix formalism. We investigate the link between causality and the closely related notion of causal separability of quantum processes, which we here define rigorously in analogy with the link between Bell locality and separability of quantum states. We show that causality and causal separability are not equivalent in general by giving an example of a physically admissible tripartite quantum process that is causal but not causally separable. We also show that there are causally separable quantum processes that become non-causal if extended by supplying the parties with entangled ancillas. This motivates the concepts of extensibly causal and extensibly causally separable (ECS) processes, for which the respective property remains invariant under extension. We characterize the class of ECS quantum processes in the tripartite case via simple conditions on the form of the process matrix. We show that the processes realizable by classically controlled quantum circuits are ECS and conjecture that the reverse also holds.
We study the faces of the set of quantum correlations, i.e., the Bell and noncontextuality inequalities without any quantum violation. First, we investigate the question of whether every proper (facet-defining) Bell inequality for two parties, other than the trivial ones from positivity, normalization, and no-signaling, can be violated by quantum correlations, i.e., whether the classical Bell polytope or the smaller correlation polytope share any facets with their respective quantum sets. To do this, we develop a recently derived bound on the quantum value of linear games based on the norms of game matrices to give a simple sufficient condition to identify linear games with no quantum advantage. Additionally we show how this bound can be extended to the general class of unique games. We then show that the paradigmatic examples of correlation Bell inequalities with no quantum violation, namely the nonlocal computation games, do not constitute facet-defining Bell inequalities, not even for the correlation polytope. We also extend this to an arbitrary prime number of outcomes for a specific class of these games. We then study the faces in the simplest Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt Bell scenario of binary dichotomic measurements, and identify edges in the set of quantum correlations in this scenario. Finally, we relate the noncontextual polytope of single-party correlation inequalities with the cut polytope $\text{CUT}(\mathbf{\ensuremath{\nabla}}G)$, where G denotes the compatibility graph of observables in the contextuality scenario and $\mathbf{\ensuremath{\nabla}}G$ denotes the suspension graph of G. We observe that there exist facet-defining noncontextuality inequalities with no quantum violation, and furthermore that this set of inequalities is beyond those implied by the consistent exclusivity principle.
In this work, we study a particular class of Bell inequalities involving only direct equality-comparisons of outcomes. In the bipartite case, the scenario can be interpreted as a natural generalization of full-correlator in- equalities (XOR games) beyond binary outputs. We define the sub-polytope of the local polytope corresponding to this scenario and solve it for several bipartite and multipartite scenarios by leveraging some structural prop- erties. In doing so, we obtain thousands of new tight inequalities, many of which are also facets of the standard local polytope. We also define unanimous Bell inequalities, a particular case of the previous class applied to the multipartite setting in which only full-equality events (all outcomes equal) are considered. We show that such inequalities can always be written as deterministic nonlocal games, and we give a simple multipartite unanimous family and prove its local bound. We show that most of these inequalities admit quantum violations, and we also display aspects of their importance for nonlocality. For instance, we identify examples where such inequalities can act as dimension witnesses, outcome witnesses, witnesses of genuine multipartite nonlocality, as well as being relevant to CHSH. These results show that these simple and elegant inequalities by themselves provide a powerful tool for discovering new Bell inequalities and device-independent witnesses.
Non-trivial facet inequalities play important role in detecting and quantifying the nonolocality of a state -- specially a pure state. Such inequalities are expected to be tight. Number of such inequalities depends on the Bell test scenario. With the increase in the number of parties, dimensionality of the Hilbert space, or/and the number of measurements, there are more nontrivial facet inequalities. By considering a specific measurement scenario, we find that for any multipartite qubit state, local polytope can have only one nontrivial facet. Therefore there exist a possibility that only one Bell inequality, and its permutations, would be able to detect the nonlocality of a pure state. The scenario involves two dichotomic measurement settings for two parties and one dichotomic measurement by other parties. This measurement scenario for a multipartite state may be considered as minimal scenario involving multipartite correlations that can detect nonlocality. We present detailed results for three-qubit states.