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arXiv:2001.09646 · Proceedings of the Royal Society A Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences

The cost of quantum locality

C. A. Bédard

Published Feb 1, 2021• 11 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

It has been more than 20 years since Deutsch and Hayden demonstrated that quantum systems can be completely described locally-notwithstanding Bell's theorem. More recently, Raymond-Robichaud proposed two other approaches to the same conclusion. In this paper, all these means of describing quantum systems locally are proved formally equivalent. The cost of such descriptions is then quantified by the dimensionality of their underlining space. The number of degrees of freedom of a single qubit's local description is shown to grow exponentially with the total number of qubits considered as a global system. This apparently unreasonable cost to describe such a small system in a large Universe is nonetheless shown to be expected. Finally, structures that supplement the universal wave function are investigated.

DOI
10.1098/rspa.2020.0602

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•Jan 1, 2017•0 citations
It has been more than 20 years since Deutsch and Hayden demonstrated that quantum systems can be completely described locally-notwithstanding Bell's theorem. More recently, Raymond-Robichaud proposed two other approaches to the same conclusion. In this paper, all these means of describing quantum systems locally are proved formally equivalent. The cost of such descriptions is then quantified by the dimensionality of their underlining space. The number of degrees of freedom of a single qubit's local description is shown to grow exponentially with the total number of qubits considered as a global system. This apparently unreasonable cost to describe such a small system in a large Universe is nonetheless shown to be expected. Finally, structures that supplement the universal wave function are investigated.
Local realism has been the subject of much discussion in modern physics, partly because our deepest theories of physics appear to contradict one another in regard to whether reality is local. According to general relativity, it is, as physical quantities (perceptible or not) in two spacelike separated regions cannot affect one another. Yet, in quantum theory, it has traditionally been thought that local realism cannot hold and that such effects do occur. This apparent discrepancy between the two theories is resolved by Everettian quantum theory, as first proven by Deutsch & Hayden (2000). In this paper, I will explain how local realism is respected in quantum theory and review the advances in our understanding of locality since Deutsch & Hayden's work, including the concept of local branching and the more general analysis by Raymond-Robichaud (2021)
Bell's theorem establishes that a local and spatially separable physical theory with no superdeterminism or retrocausality must be a theory of many local worlds. The local many worlds formalism of quantum mechanics is a transparent separable physical theory in spacetime with a Lorentz covariant causal structure. Unlike the Everett many worlds interpretation, there is no nonseparable universal wavefunction in configuration space, but like Everett, there is only local unitary evolution which conserves probability (fluid) current, and no wavefunction collapse. Each event in spacetime has its own local wavefunction which is built up using only the local wavefunctions and local unitary evolution operators within its past light cone, and which is entirely disconnected from spacelike separated local wavefunctions. We call this the local Schrödinger picture. Local many worlds can also be described in the Heisenberg picture by ascribing Deutsch-Hayden (DH) descriptors to each individual system, each of which evolves under local unitary operations. Both the local wavefunctions and DH descriptors contain records of past interactions, and while the local wavefunctions provide a clear and intuitive physical narrative, the descriptors contain all of the same information in a much more compact form. Unfortunately, the compact form is also somewhat cryptic, which has made the local Heisenberg picture relatively inaccessible. The purpose of this article is to show that the local wavefunctions for any NNN-qubit system can always be constructed directly from the DH descriptors, allowing us to combine the benefits of both pictures.
It has been more than 20 years since Deutsch and Hayden proved the locality of quantum theory, using the Heisenberg picture of quantum computational networks. Of course, locality holds even in the face of entanglement and Bell’s theorem. Today, most researchers in quantum foundations are still convinced not only that a local description of quantum systems has not yet been provided, but that it cannot exist. The main goal of this paper is to address this misconception by re-explaining the descriptor formalism in a hopefully accessible and self-contained way. It is a step-by-step guide to how and why descriptors work. Finally, superdense coding is revisited in the light of descriptors.
Bell's theorem is 50 years old. Still there is a controversy about its implications. Much of it has its roots in confusion regarding the premises from which the theorem can be derived. Some claim that a derivation of Bell's inequalities requires just locality assumption, and nothing more. Violations of the inequalities are then interpreted as ``nonlocality'' or ``quantum nonlocality''. We show that such claims are unfounded and that every derivation of Bell's inequalities requires a premise -- in addition to locality and freedom of choice -- which is either assumed tacitly, or unconsciously, or is embedded in a single compound condition (like Bell's ``local causality''). The premise is equivalent to the assumption of existence of additional variables which do not appear in the quantum formalism (in form of determinism, or joint probability for outcomes of all conceivable measurements, or ``additional causes`'', or ``hidden variables'', ``complete description of the state'' or counterfactual definiteness, etc.). A certain irony is that perhaps the main message of violation of Bell's inequalities is that our notion of locality should be based on an operationally well-defined no-signalling condition, rather than on local causality.
Encoding the state of physical systems, the many-body wavefunction lives in a Hilbert space that conveniently offers a tensor factor to each constituent of the system. Consequentially, the wavefunction inherits structural properties such as entanglement, a new type of quantum correlation across the tensor factors. Entanglement can be quantified by forming polynomials in the wavefunction that remain invariant under local operations, which in turn naturally imply the properties we intuit about entanglement. It follows from the Tarski-Seidenberg theorem that these polynomial entanglement measures must obey polynomial constraints. It is among these constraints that the core features separating quantum correlations from classical correlations are illuminated, such as their monogamous nature. The smallest non-trivial system which exhibits entanglement monogamy tradeoffs governed by polynomial constraints is three qubits, for which we find novel constraints that are stronger than the previously known constraints, and which may as well be a complete description of three-qubit entanglement since the number of degrees of freedom matches the number of entanglement measures. A remarkable redundancy known in three qubits is that any party's total entanglement decomposes exactly into bipartite and tripartite type entanglement; we find that this behavior is merely part of the GHZ family tradition, and that any party within the n-qubit GHZ SLOCC equivalence class also has total entanglement which decomposes exactly into all k-partite type entanglements, thus providing insight into strong versions of monogamy relations. Refocusing back to tripartite systems, we then suppose arbitrarily many degrees of freedom into our subsystems, which appear to refuse all temptations of polygamy. Up to this point we have only been considering idealized isolated systems as it is known that monogamy relations aren't sensitive to the total purity, however we then find entanglement constraints which are violated by globally mixed states, ultimately suggesting that environments can enable entanglement to grow beyond what is otherwise allowed. Finally, we address the dynamical behavior of entanglement under several key interactions, and characterize the couplings according to their ability to generate entanglement.