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arXiv:2103.12636 · Science Advances

Temporal teleportation with pseudo-density operators: How dynamics emerges from temporal entanglement

Chiara Marletto, Vlatko Vedral, Salvatore Virzì, Alessio Avella, Fabrizio Piacentini, Marco Gramegna, Ivo Pietro Degiovanni, Marco Genovese

Published Sep 15, 2021• 23 citations
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Abstract

We show that, by using temporal quantum correlations as expressed by pseudo-density operators (PDOs), it is possible to recover formally the standard quantum dynamical evolution as a sequence of teleportations in time. We demonstrate that any completely positive evolution can be formally reconstructed by teleportation with different temporally correlated states. This provides a different interpretation of maximally correlated PDOs, as resources to induce quantum time evolution. Furthermore, we note that the possibility of this protocol stems from the strict formal correspondence between spatial and temporal entanglement in quantum theory. We proceed to demonstrate experimentally this correspondence, by showing a multipartite violation of generalized temporal and spatial Bell inequalities and verifying agreement with theoretical predictions to a high degree of accuracy, in high-quality photon qubits.

DOI
10.1126/sciadv.abe4742

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We show that, by using temporal quantum correlations as expressed by pseudo-density operators (PDOs), it is possible to recover formally the standard quantum dynamical evolution as a sequence of teleportations in time. We demonstrate that any completely positive evolution can be formally reconstructed by teleportation with different temporally correlated states. This provides a different interpretation of maximally correlated PDOs, as resources to induce quantum time evolution. Furthermore, we note that the possibility of this protocol stems from the strict formal correspondence between spatial and temporal entanglement in quantum theory. We proceed to demonstrate experimentally this correspondence, by showing a multipartite violation of generalized temporal and spatial Bell inequalities and verifying agreement with theoretical predictions to a high degree of accuracy, in high-quality photon qubits.
Abstract Multipartite quantum correlations are a powerful resource that underpins applications from quantum metrology to quantum computing. While most research has focused on spatial correlations, it is now becoming clear that a sequence of measurements on a single quantum system at different points in time reveals a similarly rich, yet fundamentally different structure of multipartite temporal correlations. Here we experimentally observe genuine multi-time correlations in a sequence of three generalized measurements on a single photon. These correlations, manifest by a simultaneous violation of all pairwise Bell inequalities, cannot be reproduced by any spatial quantum state of equal dimension. Our work lays the foundation for the exploration of temporal correlations arising in quantum networks for quantum information applications.
In ordinary, non-relativistic, quantum physics, time enters only as a parameter and not as an observable: a state of a physical system is specified at a given time and then evolved according to the prescribed dynamics. While the state can, and usually does, extend across all space, it is only defined at one instant of time. Here we ask what would happen if we defined the notion of the quantum density matrix for multiple spatial and temporal measurements. We introduce the concept of a pseudo-density matrix (PDM) which treats space and time indiscriminately. This matrix in general fails to be positive for measurement events which do not occur simultaneously, motivating us to define a measure of causality that discriminates between spatial and temporal correlations. Important properties of this measure, such as monotonicity under local operations, are proved. Two qubit NMR experiments are presented that illustrate how a temporal pseudo-density matrix approaches a genuinely allowed density matrix as the amount of decoherence is increased between two consecutive measurements.
Closed timelike curves are striking predictions of general relativity allowing for time-travel. They are afflicted by notorious causality issues (e.g. grandfather's paradox). Quantum models where a qubit travels back in time solve these problems, at the cost of violating quantum theory's linearity-leading e.g. to universal quantum cloning. Interestingly, linearity is violated even by open timelike curves (OTCs), where the qubit does not interact with its past copy, but is initially entangled with another qubit. Non-linear dynamics is needed to avoid violating entanglement monogamy. Here we propose an alternative approach to OTCs, allowing for monogamy violations. Specifically, we describe the qubit in the OTC via a pseudo-density operator-a unified descriptor of both temporal and spatial correlations. We also simulate the monogamy violation with polarization-entangled photons, providing a pseudo-density operator quantum tomography. Remarkably, our proposal applies to any space-time correlations violating entanglement monogamy, such as those arising in black holes.
We show that, given an evolving quantum system and the quasiprobability distribution generated by the spatiotemporal generalization of the Born rule in pseudo density-matrices (PDMs), this distribution deviates from the sequential measurements probability distribution, given by the Lüders von-Neumann distribution, if and only if the non-signaling in time (NSIT) is violated; equivalently, if and only if the macroscopic realism (MR) is violated. Furthermore, we propose a definition of temporal entanglement according to the structure of the PDMs that is analogous to the definition of spatial entanglement in density matrices, showing that temporal entanglement is necessary for the violation of temporal Bell inequalities and the violation of MR. We employ our results to study the relationship between the negativity of the PDM, temporal entanglement, violation of temporal Bell inequalities, and MR.
While in relativity theory space evolves over time into a single entity known as spacetime, quantum theory lacks a standard notion of how to encapsulate the dynamical evolution of a quantum state into a single "state over time". Recently it was emphasized in the work of Fitzsimons, Jones and Vedral that if such a state over time is to encode not only spatial but also temporal correlations which exist within a quantum dynamical process, then it should be represented not by a density matrix, but rather, by a pseudo-density matrix . A pseudo-density matrix is a hermitian matrix of unit trace whose marginals are density matrices, and in this work, we make use a factorization system for quantum channels to associate a pseudo-density matrix with a quantum system which is to evolve according to a finite sequence of quantum channels. We then view such a pseudo-density matrix as the quantum analog of a local patch of spacetime, and we make an in-depth mathematical analysis of such quantum dynamical pseudo-density matrices and the properties they satisfy. We also show how to explicitly extract quantum dynamics from a given pseudo-density matrix, thus solving an open problem posed in the literature.
Abstract Spatial and temporal quantum correlations can be unified in the framework of the pseudo-density operators (PDOs), and quantum causality between the involved events in an experiment is encoded in the corresponding PDO. We study the relationship between local causal information and global causal structure. A space-time marginal problem is proposed to infer global causal structures from given marginal causal structures where causal structures are represented by the reduced PDOs; we show that there almost always exists a solution in this case. By imposing the corresponding constraints on this solution set, we could obtain the required solutions for special classes of marginal problems, like a positive semidefinite marginal problem, separable marginal problem, etc. We introduce a space-time entropy and propose a method to determine the global causal structure based on the maximum entropy principle. The notion of quantum pseudo-channel (QPC) is also introduced and we demonstrate that the QPC marginal problem can be solved by transforming it into a PDO marginal problem via the channel-state duality.