Complementarity and non-locality in complex systems

Menas C. Kafatos

Bob Coecke, Ross Duncan, Aleks Kissinger +1 more

Categorical quantum mechanics studies quantum theory in the framework of dagger-compact closed categories. Using this framework, we establish a tight relationship between two key quantum theoretical notions: non-locality and complementarity. In particular, we establish a direct connection between Mermin-type non-locality scenarios, which we generalise to an arbitrary number of parties, using systems of arbitrary dimension, and performing arbitrary measurements, and a new stronger notion of complementarity which we introduce here. Our derivation of the fact that strong complementarity is a necessary condition for a Mermin scenario provides a crisp operational interpretation for strong complementarity. We also provide a complete classification of strongly complementary observables for quantum theory, something which has not yet been achieved for ordinary complementarity. Since our main results are expressed in the (diagrammatic) language of dagger-compact categories, they can be applied outside of quantum theory, in any setting which supports the purely algebraic notion of strongly complementary observables. We have therefore introduced a method for discussing non-locality in a wide variety of models in addition to quantum theory. The diagrammatic calculus substantially simplifies (and sometimes even trivialises) many of the derivations, and provides new insights. In particular, the diagrammatic computation of correlations clearly shows how local measurements interact to yield a global overall effect. In other words, we depict non-locality.

Harald Atmanspacher A

Don A. Howard

Jonathan Oppenheim, Karol Horodecki, Michał Horodecki +2 more

Complex physical systems contain information which, under some well-defined processes can differentiate between local and nonlocal information. Both these fundamental aspects of information are defined operationally. Local information is locally accessible and allows one to perform processes, such as physical work, while nonlocal information allows one to perform processes such as teleportation. It is shown that these two kinds of information are complementary in the sense that two parties can either gain access to the nonlocal information or to the local information but not both. This complementarity has a form similar to that expressed by entropic uncertainty relations. For pure states, the entanglement plays the role of Planck's constant. We also find another class of complementarity relations which applies to operators and is induced when two parties can only perform local operations and communicate classical (LOCC). In particular, observables such as the parity and phase of two qubits commute but under LOCC, they are complementary observables. It is also found this complementarity is pure in the sense that it can be ``decoupled'' from the uncertainty principle. It is suggested that these complementarities represent an essential extension of Bohr's complementarity to complex (distributed) systems which are entangled.

Liang-Liang Sun, Sixia Yu, Zeng‐Bing Chen

We propose an uncertainty-complementarity balance relation and build quantitative connections among non-locality, complementarity, and uncertainty. Our balance relation, which is formulated in a theory-independent manner, states that for two measurements performed sequentially, the complementarity demonstrated in the first measurement in terms of disturbance is no greater than the uncertainty of the first measurement. Quantum theory respects our balance relation, from which the Tsirelson bound can be derived, up to an inessential assumption. In the simplest Bell scenario, we show that the bound of Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt inequality for a general non-local theory can be expressed as a function of the balance strength, a constance for the given theory. As an application, we derive the balance strength as well as the nonlocal bound of Popescu-Rohrlich box. Our results shed light on quantitative connections among three fundamental concepts, i.e., uncertainty, complementarity and non-locality.