Local quantum physics and models

Ángelo Lucia, Toby S. Cubitt, Spyridon Michalakis +1 more

The physics of many materials is modeled by quantum many-body systems with local interactions. If the model of the system is sensitive to noise from the environment, or small perturbations to the original interactions, it will not properly model the robustness of the real physical system it aims to describe, or be useful when engineering novel systems for quantum information processing. We show that local observables and correlation functions of local Liouvillians are stable to local perturbations if the dynamics is rapidly mixing and has a unique fixed point. No other condition is required.

Rudolf Haag

Pieter Naaijkens

Roger Colbeck, Renato Renner

In [Physical Review Letters 101, 050403 (2008)], we showed that quantum theory cannot be explained by a hidden variable model with a non-trivial local part. The purpose of this comment is to clarify our notion of local part, which seems to have caused some confusion in the recent literature. This notion is based on Bell's and demands that local hidden variables are physical, the idea being that, if discovered, they would not contradict basic physical principles. We explain why the recent supposed "counterexamples" that have appeared are not counterexamples to our theorem--in fact they are based on a definition of local hidden variables which would allow signalling and is therefore not physical.

Vernon M. Neppe, Edward R. Close

In this second article of the six-part series, we discuss the role of physics and quanta in non-locality and indicate that these models are diverse, not just entanglement but there are at least nine other models. We introduce the idea of a global term “relative quantal non-locality”. These ideas provide a perspective to understanding non-locality in consciousness sciences. There may or may not be commonality as both models are diverse. We define consciousness. We also discuss Kafatos’s three-tier classification and show how it can be integrated into levels of the relative non-locality model. We emphasize the need for a broad classification of non-locality.

Takao Tati