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arXiv:1804.05954

Simple negative result for physically universal controllers with macroscopic interface

Dominik Janzing

Published Apr 16, 2018• 0 citations
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Abstract

To study potential limitations of controllability of physical systems I have earlier proposed physically universal cellular automata and Hamiltonians. These are translation invariant interactions for which any control operation on a finite target region can be implemented by the autonomous time evolution if the complement of the target region is 'programmed' to an appropriate initial state. This provides a model of control where the cut between a system and its controller can be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut defining the boundary between a quantum system and its measurement device. However, in the known physically universal CAs the implementation of microscopic transformations requires to write the 'program' into microscopic degrees of freedom, while human actions take place on the macroscopic level. I therefore ask whether there exist physically universal interactions for which any desired operation on a target region can be performed by only controlling the macroscopic state of its surrounding. A very simple argument shows that this is impossible with respect to the notion of 'macroscopic' proposed here: control devices whose position is only specified up to 'macroscopic precision' cannot operate at a precise location in space. This suggests that reasonable notions of `universal controllability' need to be tailored to the manipulation of relative coordinates, but it is not obvious how to do this. The statement that any microscopic transformation can be implemented in principle, whenever it is true in any sense, it does not seem to be true in its most obvious sense.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1804.05954

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To study potential limitations of controllability of physical systems I have earlier proposed physically universal cellular automata and Hamiltonians. These are translation invariant interactions for which any control operation on a finite target region can be implemented by the autonomous time evolution if the complement of the target region is 'programmed' to an appropriate initial state. This provides a model of control where the cut between a system and its controller can be consistently shifted, in analogy to the Heisenberg cut defining the boundary between a quantum system and its measurement device. However, in the known physically universal CAs the implementation of microscopic transformations requires to write the 'program' into microscopic degrees of freedom, while human actions take place on the macroscopic level. I therefore ask whether there exist physically universal interactions for which any desired operation on a target region can be performed by only controlling the macroscopic state of its surrounding. A very simple argument shows that this is impossible with respect to the notion of 'macroscopic' proposed here: control devices whose position is only specified up to 'macroscopic precision' cannot operate at a precise location in space. This suggests that reasonable notions of `universal controllability' need to be tailored to the manipulation of relative coordinates, but it is not obvious how to do this. The statement that any microscopic transformation can be implemented in principle, whenever it is true in any sense, it does not seem to be true in its most obvious sense.
This paper examines a deceptively simple question: can a localized physical controller acquire complete control over an entire physical system? Rather than treating “global control” as a single property, the paper decomposes the question into a hierarchy of distinct notions: unitary controllability, exact state controllability, approximate and infinite-time controllability, operational realizability, causal reach, and macroscopic domination. The analysis begins by rejecting locality alone as a no-go principle. Established results in finite quantum networks, together with a reproducible three-spin Heisenberg calculation, show that a single local actuator can generate global unitary controllability under suitable assumptions. The paper then identifies narrower and genuine obstructions. A finite-time causal proposition shows that a compactly generated intervention cannot exactly prepare a fixed global target whose local statistics differ from the initial state at arbitrarily large causal distances. The Ball–Marsden–Slemrod obstruction and its (L^1_{\mathrm{loc}}) extension provide a distinct topological limitation for broad classes of infinite-dimensional bilinear control systems. These negative results are deliberately constrained by positive counterexamples. Approximate controllability and exact infinite-time controllability remain possible in important infinite-dimensional systems, while Reeh–Schlieder density in quantum field theory does not by itself imply deterministic operational control. The central conclusion is therefore not a universal “no-global-control” law. It is a hierarchy of claims, assumptions, counterexamples, and inferential limits. In particular, failure of exact microscopic controllability does not imply protection against catastrophic macroscopic domination. The accompanying reproducibility package includes the Lie-closure verification code, tolerance analysis, source files, and claim-audit materials.
Current interpretations of quantum mechanics suggest that the classical concepts of space and time are not applicable to microscopic systems. Salecker and Wigner have recently proved that these concepts have no operational meaning for microsystems. Therefore, space-time descriptions may be valid only for macroscopic systems. It is here suggested that space and time themselves arise from, but do not have analogs in, the properties of microscopic particles, in the same way that thermodynamic properties arise as a result of interactions among the many actually existing particles of the universe. Neither the particles nor the interactions need to be described in spatial-temporal terms. This macroscopic interpretation of space-time seems compatible with the known properties of the physical world, suggests a more direct interpretation of the statistical nature of microscopic events, and offers a new approach to some physical problems.
In this paper, we define three different notions of controllability for quantum mechanical systems involving the possibility of driving the evolution operator as well as the state of the system. By using general results on transitivity of transformation groups on spheres we establish the connections among these different notions of controllability. Motivated by the physical model of multilevel quantum systems, we also study the relation between the controllability in arbitrary small time of a system varying on a compact transformation Lie group and the corresponding system on the associated homogeneous space. As an application, we prove for the system of two interacting spin 1/2 particles the negative result that not every state transfer can be obtained in arbitrary time.
In this paper, we define three different notions of controllability for quantum mechanical systems involving the possibility of driving the evolution operator as well as the state of the system. By using general results on transitivity of transformation groups on spheres we establish the connections among these different notions of controllability. Motivated by the physical model of multilevel quantum systems, we also study the relation between the controllability in arbitrary small time of a system varying on a compact transformation Lie group and the corresponding system on the associated homogeneous space. As an application, we prove for the system of two interacting spin 1/2 particles the negative result that not every state transfer can be obtained in arbitrary time.
In this work we extend the notion of universal quantum Hamiltonians to the setting of translationally-invariant systems. We present a construction that allows a two-dimensional spin lattice with nearest-neighbour interactions, open boundaries, and translational symmetry to simulate any local target Hamiltonian---i.e. to reproduce the whole of the target system within its low-energy subspace to arbitrarily-high precision. Since this implies the capability to simulate non-translationally-invariant many-body systems with translationally-invariant couplings, any effect such as characteristics commonly associated to systems with external disorder, e.g. many-body localization, can also occur within the low-energy Hilbert space sector of translationally-invariant systems. Then we sketch a variant of the universal lattice construction optimized for simulating translationally-invariant target Hamiltonians. Finally we prove that qubit Hamiltonians consisting of Heisenberg or XY interactions of varying interaction strengths restricted to the edges of a connected translationally-invariant graph embedded in RD\mathbb{R}^DRD are universal, and can efficiently simulate any geometrically local Hamiltonian in RD\mathbb{R}^DRD.
An explicit model allowing a unified description of microscopic and macroscopic systems is exhibited. First, a modified quantum dynamics for the description of macroscopic objects is constructed and it is shown that it forbids the occurrence of linear superpositions of states localized in far-away spatial regions and induces an evolution agreeing with classical mechanics. This dynamics also allows a description of the evolution in terms of trajectories. To set up a unified description of all physical phenomena, a modification of the dynamics, with respect to the standard Hamiltonian one, is then postulated also for microscopic systems. It is shown that one can consistently deduce from it the previously considered dynamics for the center of mass of macroscopic systems. Choosing in an appropriate way the parameters of the so-obtained model one can show that both the standard quantum theory for microscopic objects and the classical behavior for macroscopic objects can all be derived in a consistent way. In the case of a macroscopic system one can obtain, by means of appropriate approximations, a description of the evolution in terms of a phase-space density distribution obeying a Fokker-Planck diffusion equation. The model also provides the basis for a conceptually appealing description of quantum measurement.