PIRSA:17070000

Spekkens’ toy model in all dimensions and its relationship with stabiliser quantum mechanics

Catani, L. (2017). Spekkens’ toy model in all dimensions and its relationship with stabiliser quantum mechanics. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/17070000

Catani, Lorenzo. Spekkens’ toy model in all dimensions and its relationship with stabiliser quantum mechanics. Perimeter Institute, Jul. 04, 2017, https://pirsa.org/17070000 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:17070000,
            doi = {10.48660/17070000},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/17070000},
            author = {Catani, Lorenzo},
            keywords = {Quantum Foundations},
            language = {en},
            title = {Spekkens{\textquoteright} toy model in all dimensions and its relationship with stabiliser quantum mechanics},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2017},
            month = {jul},
            note = {PIRSA:17070000 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Lorenzo Catani

Chapman University

Talk number
PIRSA:17070000
Collection
Talk Type
Subject
Abstract

In this talk I am going to describe Spekkens’ toy model, a non-contextual hidden variable model with an epistemic restriction, a constraint on what an observer can know about reality. The aim of the model, developed for continuous and discrete prime degrees of freedom, is to advocate the epistemic view of quantum theory, where quantum states are states of incomplete knowledge about a deeper underlying reality. In spite of its classical flavour, many aspects that were thought to belong only to quantum mechanics can be reproduced in the model. 

I am going to describe our results regarding the formulation of rules for the update of states after measurement. I will do it for systems of discrete prime dimensions and I will then give the idea on how to proceed in the non-prime dimensional case. 

I will also depict the relationship between Spekkens’ model, stabiliser quantum mechanics and Gross' theory of discrete Wigner functions (they are equivalent theories in odd dimensions) in terms of measurement update rules.

I will conclude by briefly discussing a project we have been recently working on that consists of characterising sub theories of Spekkens’ model that are operationally equivalent to sub theories of QM (in particular in the case of qubits) and use them to represent the non-contextual classically simulable part of state-injection schemes of computation with contextuality as a resource.