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arXiv:hep-th/9503024 · Physical review. D. Particles, fields, gravitation, and cosmology/Physical review. D. Particles and fields

Evolution laws taking pure states to mixed states in quantum field theory

William George Unruh, Robert M. Wald

Published Aug 15, 1995• 152 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

It has been argued that any evolution law taking pure states to mixed states in quantum field theory necessarily gives rise to violations of either causality or energy-momentum conservation in such a way as to have unacceptable consequences for ordinary laboratory physics. We show here that this is not the case by giving a simple class of examples of Markovian evolution laws where rapid evolution from pure states to mixed states occurs for a wide class of states with appropriate properties at the ``Planck scale,'' suitable locality and causality properties hold for all states, and the deviations from ordinary dynamics (and, in particular, violations of energy-momentum conservation) are unobservably small for all states which one could expect to produce in a laboratory. In addition, we argue (via consideration of other, non-Markovian models) that conservation of energy and momentum for all states is not fundamentally incompatible with causality in dynamical models in which pure states evolve to mixed states.

DOI
10.1103/physrevd.52.2176

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It has been argued that any evolution law taking pure states to mixed states in quantum field theory necessarily gives rise to violations of either causality or energy-momentum conservation in such a way as to have unacceptable consequences for ordinary laboratory physics. We show here that this is not the case by giving a simple class of examples of Markovian evolution laws where rapid evolution from pure states to mixed states occurs for a wide class of states with appropriate properties at the ``Planck scale,'' suitable locality and causality properties hold for all states, and the deviations from ordinary dynamics (and, in particular, violations of energy-momentum conservation) are unobservably small for all states which one could expect to produce in a laboratory. In addition, we argue (via consideration of other, non-Markovian models) that conservation of energy and momentum for all states is not fundamentally incompatible with causality in dynamical models in which pure states evolve to mixed states.
We argue that usual quantum statics and the dynamical equivalence of mixed quantum states to {\it probabilistic mixtures}suffice to guarantee a linear evolution law, which necessarily complies with the no-signaling condition. Alternatively, there are nonlinear dynamical extensions that treat mixed states as {\it elementary mixtures} and evolve {\it every}pure state linearly and unitarily. But if all {\it entangled} pure states evolve linearly, then elementary mixtures cannot evolve nonlinearly without challenging quantum locality. Conversely, any such extension that is relativistically well behaved demands a nonlinear evolution [decoherence] of pure entangled states. Wherefrom follows that the linear evolution of entangled pure states provides an unequivocal signature of linear quantum dynamics.
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In the formulation of Banks, Peskin and Susskind, we show that one can construct evolution equations for the quantum mechanical density matrix ρρρ with operators which do not commute with hamiltonian which evolve pure states into mixed states, preserve the normalization and positivity of ρρρ and conserve energy. Furthermore, it seems to be different from a quantum mechanical system with random sources.
Physical conservation laws, such as those of energy and momentum, are generally believed to hold exactly and locally in spacetime, including in quantum phenomena. Yet Aharonov, Popescu, and Rohrlich (APR) recently argued, on the basis of a thought experiment, that individual quantum events, unlike ensemble averages, may occasionally violate local conservation laws. Their argument relies on the wave phenomenon known as "superoscillations", which APR themselves discovered more than 30 years ago. Here we provide experimental evidence for such a violation. We extract photons from a small superoscillatory region near the core of an optical vortex and show that their mean transverse momentum is statistically incompatible with a general bound implied by local momentum conservation. The derivation of this bound requires only the theoretically well-supported assumption that the extraction mechanism does not alter the photons' mean transverse momentum. We also detect photons with high transverse momentum at a rate significantly exceeding that predicted by a model assuming local momentum conservation. Because this violation can be established only counterfactually and through postselection, it does not conflict with relativistic causality. Our results may represent the first example of a distinct form of quantum nonlocality that does not explicitly rely on entanglement.
Theories which have fundamental information destruction or decoherence are motivated by the black hole information paradox where one appears to have pure states evolving into mixed states. However such theories have either violated conservation laws, or are highly non-local. Here, we show that the tension between conservation laws and locality can be circumvented by constructing a relational theory of information destruction. In terms of conservation laws, we derive a generalisation of Noether's theorem for general theories, and show that symmetries imply a strong restriction on the type of evolution permissable. With respect to locality, we distinguish violations of causality from the creation or destruction of space-like seperated correlations. We show that violations of causality need not occur in a relational framework, although one can have situations where correlations decay faster than one might otherwise expect or can be created over spatial distances. This creation or destruction of correlations cannot be used to signal superluminally, and thus no violation of causality occurs. We prove that theories with information destruction can be made time-symmetric, thus impossing no arrow of time.