Recently it was proved [arXiv:2001.04383] that a closure of the set of spatial quantum correlations is strictly less than the set of commuting quantum correlations. Thus, the famous Tsirelson conjecture doesn’t hold true. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of ideas relating quantum correlations to fundamental questions in the theory of nonlocal games and the theory of operator algebras as well.
Recently it was proved [arXiv:2001.04383] that a closure of the set of spatial quantum correlations is strictly less than the set of commuting quantum correlations. Thus, the famous Tsirelson conjecture doesn’t hold true. The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of ideas relating quantum correlations to fundamental questions in the theory of nonlocal games and the theory of operator algebras as well.
Tsirelson once claimed that the set of quantum correlations, defined by strategies of non-local two-player games, does not depend on which of two possible models is chosen: the tensor product model or the commuting operator model. He later came back from this claim, and the resulting conjecture is now known as Tsirelson’s problem. The problem has since been proven equivalent to notoriously hard problems in operator theory, such as the Connes’ Embedding Problem and the QWEP conjecture. In this master thesis, we look at the finite dimensional case of Tsirelson’s problem, working out all the details of an existing proof and giving a new, shorter proof which also extends to the nuclear case. Moreover, we give an overview of the equivalence of Tsirelson’s problem and two of Kirchberg’s conjectures, including the QWEP conjecture. Finally, we give some results and considerations for the three-player case of Tsirelson’s problem. The appendix contains proofs of many related results used throughout the thesis, and also a beginner’s introduction to quantum mechanics.
More precisely, we give a simple and very short proof of "the Connes embedding problem implies the synchronous Tsirelson conjecture" that relies on only two elementary ingredients: 1) the well-known description of synchronous correlations as traces on the algebra per player C∗(player)=C∗(inputs∣outputs) and 2) an elementary lifting result by Kim, Paulsen and Schafhauser. Moreover, this bypasses every of the deep results by Kirchberg as well as any other implicit reformulation as the microstates conjecture and thelike. Meanwhile, we also give a different construction of Connes' algebra Rω appearing in the Connes embedding problem, which is more suitable for the purposes of quantum information theory and much easier to comprehend for the reader without any prior knowledge in operator algebras. Most importantly, however, we present this proof for the following reason: Since the recent refutation of the synchronous Tsirelson conjecture by MIP*=RE, there exists a nonlocal game which violates the synchronous Tsirelson conjecture, and by the proof of MIP*=RE even a synchronous such game. The approach however is based on contradiction with the undecidability of the Halting problem, and so remains implicit. As such the quest now has started to give an explicit example of a synchronous game violating the synchronous Tsirelson conjecture together with a direct argument for the failure, and the current article serves as a direct translation to the corresponding operator algebra and its tracial state violating the Connes embedding problem.
We construct an explicit binary linear system game that separates Cqa, the closure of the set of finite dimensional quantum correlations, from Cqc, the set of commuting operator correlations. The game admits a perfect commuting operator strategy, while every correlation in Cqa has a success probability strictly less than 1. This provides a concrete counterexample to Tsirelson's problem in its approximation form. The defining system has 1417152 equations in 1889684 variables, with exactly three nonzero coefficients per equation and a single nonzero entry on the right hand side. We also compute the classical value exactly. The complete system is specified in Lean 4, and the separation and exact classical value are formalized using Mathlib.
Tsirelson's problem asks whether the set of nonlocal quantum correlations with a tensor product structure for the Hilbert space coincides with the one where only commutativity between observables located at different sites is assumed. Here it is shown that Kirchberg's QWEP conjecture on tensor products of C*-algebras would imply a positive answer to this question for all bipartite scenarios. This remains true also if one considers not only spatial correlations, but also spatiotemporal correlations, where each party is allowed to apply their measurements in temporal succession. We provide an example of a state together with observables such that ordinary spatial correlations are local, while the spatiotemporal correlations reveal nonlocality. Moreover, we find an extended version of Tsirelson's problem which, for each nontrivial Bell scenario, is equivalent to the QWEP conjecture. This extended version can be conveniently formulated in terms of steering the system of a third party. Finally, a comprehensive mathematical appendix offers background material on complete positivity, tensor products of C*-algebras, group C*-algebras, and some simple reformulations of the QWEP conjecture.
In 2020, Ji et al. [arXiv:2001.04383 and Comm.~ACM 64}, 131 (2021)] provided a proof that the complexity classes MIP∗ and RE are equivalent. This result implies a negative resolution of Tsirelson's problem, that is, Cqa (the closure of the set of tensor product correlations) and Cqc (the set of commuting correlations) can be separated by a hyperplane (that is, a Bell-like inequality). In particular, there are correlations produced by commuting measurements (a finite number of them and with a finite number of outcomes) on an infinite-dimensional quantum system which cannot be approximated by sequences of finite-dimensional tensor product correlations. Here, we point out that there are four logical possibilities of this result. Each possibility is interesting because it fundamentally challenges the nature of spacially separated systems in different ways. We list open problems for making progress for deciding which of the possibilities is correct.
We relate Connes' embedding problem in operator algebras to the Brown algebra Unc(n), which is defined as the universal unital C*-algebra generated by the entries of an n x n unitary matrix. In particular, we show that the embedding problem is equivalent to determining whether or not the algebra Unc(n) has the weak expectation property for any (equivalently, all) n at least 2. From this perspective, we develop a theory of what we call unitary correlation sets. These sets are analogous to the usual sets of bipartite probabilistic correlations arising from the typical models in quantum information theory. We show that the analogue of the weak Tsirelson problem for unitary correlation sets is again equivalent to Connes' embedding problem. Moreover, we show that as long as Alice and Bob's unitaries are of size at least 2, the set of spatial unitary correlations is never a closed set. This result is analogous to a recent theorem of Slofstra, which states that the set of quantum probabilistic correlations is not closed, so long as the input and output sets are large enough. \n \nWe also discuss several applications of the theory of unitary correlation sets. First, we show that the class of extended non-local games known as quantum XOR games is a rich enough class to detect the validity of Connes' embedding problem. That is, the embedding problem has a positive answer if and only if the value of every quantum XOR game in the commuting model agrees with the value of the game in the approximate finite-dimensional model. Second, we use a C*-algebraic analogue of the quantum teleportation and super-dense coding maps from quantum information theory to obtain separations between the tensor product model (or "quantum spatial" model) and the approximate finite-dimensional model (or "quantum approximate" model), for matrix-valued generalizations of the usual Tsirelson corrleation sets. We use some of the intermediate results to also obtain separations between the matrix versions of the finite-dimensional model (or "quantum model") and the tensor product model.