Quantum Foundations

Nonrelativistic quantum mechanics with a Hamiltonian that causes instantaneous translations;  Nonlocal Heisenberg equations of motion for 2 boxes with a permeable common barrier and the 2-slit interferometer

Throughout the development of quantum mechanics, the striking refusal of nature to obey classical reasoning and intuition has driven both curiosity and confusion. From the apparent inescapably probabilistic nature of the theory, to more subtle issues such as entanglement, nonlocality, and contextuality, it has always been the `nonclassical’ features that present the most interesting puzzle. More recently, it has become apparent that these features are also the primary resource for quantum information processing.
In this talk, we will introduce several types of nonclassical logical structures contained within the N-qubit Pauli group, corresponding in general to preparation and/or measurement schemes for systems of several qubits that demonstrate violation of some notion of classical reasoning. These structures are geometric in nature, and we identify the primitive elements from which more elaborate types are constructed. We will review the key types of structures that are available and explain their hierarchy. Finally we will use them to give simple and transparent proofs of entanglement correlations, quantum contextuality via the Kochen-Specker theorem, and quantum nonlocality via the Bell-GHZ theorem.
These structures have many applications in quantum information processing, but the real purpose of this talk is simply to introduce unfamiliar researchers to the simplest known logical proofs of these nonclassicality theorems, which can be understood using only the algebra of the Pauli spin matrices and simple counting arguments.

We investigate the quantum trajectories of jointly monitored transmon qubits, tracking measurement-induced entanglement creation as a continuous process.  The quantum trajectories naturally split into low and high entanglement classes corresponding to partial parity collapse.  We theoretically calculate the distribution of concurrence at any given time and show good agreement with the constructed histogram of measured concurrence trajectories.  The distribution exhibits a sharp cut-off in the high concurrence limit, defining a maximal concurrence boundary.  The most probable paths of the two classes, starting in a separable state and ending in either an entangled state or separable state, are found and compared with the experimentally constructed paths of the sub-ensemble.  The most likely time for the transmon qubits to reach their highest concurrence can also be extracted from the most likely path analysis.

In the device-independent paradigm, the labeling of parties/inputs/outputs has no physical meaning and thus the behavior of the system should be studied up to symmetry. We conduct the first formal study of relabelings appearing in Bell scenarios. The talk includes a review of previous works, a definition of Bell relabeling groups illustrated by examples, and applications, including the classification of Bell inequalities, the generalization of binary correlators to d outcomes and the computation of exact bounds using the NPA hierarchy.

In this talk I would like to put forward Wasserstein-geometry as a natural language for Quantum hydrodynamics. Wasserstein-geometry is a formal, infinite dimensional, Riemannian manifold structure on the space of probability measures on a given Riemannian manifold. The basic equations of Quantum hydrodynamics on the other hand are given by the Madelung equations. In terms of Wasserstein-geometry, Madelung equations appear in the shape of Newton's second law of motion, in which the geodesics are disturbed by the influence of a quantum potential. This was pointed out in 2008 by Max. K. von Renesse. Finally, based on the notion of Wasserstein-distance, I will will briefly introduce a natural notion of Shape Space and some of its properties.

In quantum theory every state can be diagonalised, i.e. decomposed as a convex combination of perfectly distinguishable pure states. This fact is crucial in quantum statistical mechanics, as it provides the foundation for the notions of majorisation and entropy. A natural question then arises: can we give an operational characterisation of them? We address this question in the framework of general probabilistic theories, presenting a set of axioms that guarantee that every state can be diagonalised: Causality, Purity Preservation, Purification, and Pure Sharpness. If we add the Permutability and Strong Symmetry axioms, which are in fact completely equivalent in theories satisfying the other axioms, the diagonalisation result allows us to define a well-behaved majorisation preorder on states. Indeed this majorisation criterion fully captures the convertibility of states in the operational resource theory of purity where random reversible transformations are regarded as free operations. One can also put forward two alternative notions of purity as a resource: one where free operations are unital channels, and another where free operations are generated by reversible interactions with an environment in the invariant state. Under the validity of the above axioms, all these definitions are in fact equivalent, i.e. they all lead to the same preorder on states, which is given by majorisation, in the very same way as in quantum theory.

As discussed in last week’s colloquium, the use of the p-adic metric in state space provides a route to resolving the Bell Theorem in favour of realism and local causality, without fine tuning. Here the p-adic integers provide a natural way to describe the fractal geometry of Invariant Set Theory’s state space. In this talk I first explore the role of complex numbers in Invariant Set Theory (arXiv:1605.01051), and describe a novel realistic perspective on quantum interferometry. Then I will describe a programme of work to synthesise quantum and gravitational physics realistically and causally within the framework of Invariant Set Theory. I will describe a p-adic generalisation of the field equations of General Relativity, and discuss the consequent novel perspectives for understanding the dark (energy and matter) universe.