Quantum Foundations

The second law of thermodynamics tells that physics imposes a fundamental constraint on the efficiency of all thermal machines. Here I will address the question of whether size imposes further constraints upon thermal machines, namely whether there is a minimum size below which no machine can run, and whether when they are small if they can still be efficient? I will present a simple model which shows that there is no size limitation and no limit on the efficiency of thermal machine and that this leads to a unified view of small refrigerators, pumps and engines.

Nonlocality is the most striking feature of quantum mechanics. It might even be considered its defining feature and understanding it may be the most important step towards understanding the whole theory. Yet for a long time it was impossible to pinpoint the reason behind the exact amount of nonlocality allowed by quantum mechanics expressed by Tsirelson bound. Recently information causality has been shown to be the principle from which this bound can be derived. However the whole set of nonlocal correlations and nonlocal information processing protocols that quantum mechanics allows is not specified by the Tsirelson bound. It remains an open question whether this whole zoo of nonlocality can be derived from information causality. In this talk I present the fields where information causality is applied together with most recent results or lack of such.

Landauer's erasure principle states that there is an inherent work cost associated with all irreversible operations, like the erasure of the data stored in a system. The necessary work is determined by our uncertainty: the more we know about the system, the less it costs to erase it. Here, we analyse erasure in a general setting where our information about that system can be quantum mechanical. In this scenario, our uncertainty, measured by a conditional entropy, may become negative. We establish a general relation between quantum conditional entropies and a physical quantity, the work cost of erasure. As a consequence, we obtain a thermodynamic interpretation of negative entropies: they quantify the work that can be gained by a quantum observer erasing a system. (arXiv: 1009.1630)

I revisit an example of stronger-than-quantum correlations that was discovered by Ernst Specker in 1960. The example was introduced as a parable wherein an over-protective seer sets a simple prediction task to his daughter's suitors. The challenge cannot be met because the seer asks the suitors for a noncontextual assignment of values but measures a system for which the statistics are inconsistent with such an assignment. I will show how by generalizing these sorts of correlations, one is led naturally to some well-known proofs of nonlocality and contextuality, and to some new ones. Specker's parable involves a kind of complementarity that does not arise in quantum theory - three measurements that can be implemented jointly pairwise but not triplewise -- and therefore prompts the question of what sorts of foundational principles might rule out this kind of complementarity. This is joint work with Howard Wiseman and Yeong-Cherng Liang.

In this talk we quickly review the basics of the modal "toy model" of quantum theory described by Schumacher in his September 22 colloquium at PI. We then consider how the theory addresses more general open systems. Because the modal theory has a more primitive mathematical structure than actual quantum mechanics, it lacks density operators, positive operator measurements, and completely positive maps. As we will show, however, modal quantum theory has an elegant description of the states, effects and operations of open modal systems -- a description with close analogies to actual quantum mechanics.

The question of the existence of gravitational stress-energy in general relativity has exercised investigators in the field since the very inception of the theory. Folklore has it that no adequate definition of a localized gravitational stress-energetic quantity can be given. Most arguments to that effect invoke one version or another of the Principle of Equivalence. I argue that not only are such arguments of necessity vague and hand-waving but, worse, are beside the point and do not address the heart of the issue. Based on an analysis of what it may mean for one tensor to depend in the proper way on another, I prove that, under certain natural conditions, there can be no tensor whose interpretation could be that it represents gravitational stress-energy in general relativity. It follows that gravitational energy, such as it is in general relativity, is necessarily non-local. Along the way, I prove a result of some interest in own right about the structure of the associated jet bundles of the bundle of Lorentz metrics over spacetime.

Over the last twenty years, quantum information and quantum computing have profoundly shaped our thinking about the basic concepts of quantum physics. But can these insights also shape the way we /teach/ quantum mechanics to undergraduate physics students? A recent adventure in textbook-writing suggests some strategies and dilemmas.

The uncertainty principle bounds the uncertainties about the outcomes of two incompatible measurements, such as position and momentum, on a particle. It implies that one cannot predict the outcomes for both possible choices of measurement to arbitrary precision, even if information about the preparation of the particle is available in a classical memory. However, if the particle is prepared entangled with a quantum memory, it is possible to predict the outcomes for both measurement choices precisely. I will explain a recent extension of the uncertainty principle to incorporate this case. The new relation gives a lower bound on the uncertainties, which depends on the amount of entanglement between the particle and the quantum memory. If time permits, I will also outline a couple of applications.

A brief review of some recent work on the causal set approach to quantum gravity. Causal sets are a discretisation of spacetime that allow the symmetries of GR to be preserved in the continuum approximation. One proposed application of causal sets is to use them as the histories in a quantum sum-over-histories, i.e. to construct a quantum theory of spacetime. It is expected by many that quantum gravity will introduce some kind of fuzziness uncertainty and perhaps discreteness into spacetime, and generic effects of this fuzziness are currently being sought. Applied as a model of discrete spacetime, causal sets can be used to construct simple phenomenological models which allow us to understand some of the consequences of this general expectation.

Quantum states are not observables like in any wave mechanics but co-observables describing the reality as a possible knowledge about the statistics of all quantum events, like quantum jumps, quantum decays, quantum diffusions, quantum trajectories, etc. However, as we show, the probabilistic interpretation of the traditional quantum mechanics is inconsistent with the probbilistic causality and leads to the infamous quantum measurement problem. Moreover, we prove that all attempts to solve this problem as suggested by Bohr are doomed in the traditional framework of the reversible interactions. We explore the only possibility left to resolve the quantum causality problem while keeping the reversibility of Schroedinger mechanics. This is to break the time symmetry of the Heisenberg mechanics using the nonequivalence of the Schroedinger and Heisenberg quantum mechanics on nonsimple operator algebras in infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces. This is the main idea of Eventum Mechanics, which enhances the quantum world of the future by classical events of the past and constructs the reversible Schroedinger evolutions compatible with observable quantm trajectories by irreversible quantum to classicl interfaces in terms of the reversible unitary scatterings. It puts the idea of hidden variables upside down by declaring that what is visible (in the past by now) is not quantum but classical and what is visible (by now in the future) is quantum but not classical. More on the philosophy of Eventum Mechanics can be found in [1]. We demonstrate these ideas on the toy model of the nontrivial quantum - classical bit interface. The application of these ideas in the continuous time leads to derivation of the quantum stochastic master equations reviewed in [1] and of my research pages [3]. V. P. Belavkin: Quantum Causality, Stochastics, Trajectories and Information. Reports on Progress in Physics 65 (3): 353-420 (2002). quant-ph/0208087, PDF. http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/personal/vpb/vpb_research.html http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/personal/vpb/research/cau_idy.html

Many results have been recently obtained regarding the power of hypothetical closed time-like curves (CTC’s) in quantum computation. Most of them have been derived using Deutsch’s influential model for quantum CTCs [D. Deutsch, Phys. Rev. D 44, 3197 (1991)]. Deutsch’s model demands self-consistency for the time-travelling system, but in the absence of (hypothetical) physical CTCs, it cannot be tested experimentally. In this paper we show how the one-way model of measurement-based quantum computation (MBQC) can be used to test Deutsch’s model for CTCs. Using the stabilizer formalism, we identify predictions that MBQC makes about a specific class of CTCs involving travel in time of quantum systems. Using a simple example we show that Deutsch’s formalism leads to predictions conflicting with those of the one-way model. There exists an alternative, little-discussed model for quantum time-travel due to Bennett and Schumacher (in unpublished work, see http://bit.ly/cjWUT2), which was rediscovered recently by Svetlichny [arXiv:0902.4898v1]. This model uses quantum teleportation to simulate (probabilistically) what would happen if one sends quantum states back in time. We show how the Bennett/ Schumacher/ Svetlichny (BSS) model for CTCs fits in naturally within the formalism of MBQC. We identify a class of CTC’s in this model that can be simulated deterministically using techniques associated with the stabilizer formalism. We also identify the fundamental limitation of Deutsch's model that accounts for its conflict with the predictions of MBQC and the BSS model. This work was done in collaboration with Raphael Dias da Silva and Elham Kashefi, and has appeared in preprint format (see website). Website: http://arxiv.org/abs/1003.4971

It has long been recognized that there are two distinct laws that go by the name of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The original says that there can be no process resulting in a net decrease in the total entropy of all bodies involved. A consequence of the kinetic theory of heat is that this law will not be strictly true; statistical fluctuations will result in small spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body. The currently accepted version of the Second Law is probabilistic: tiny spontaneous transfers of heat from a cooler to a warmer body will be occurring all the time, while a larger transfer is not impossible, merely improbable. There can be no process whose expected result is a net decrease in total entropy. According to Maxwell, the Second Law has only statistical validity, and this statement is easily read as an endorsement of the probabilistic version. I argue that a close reading of Maxwell, with attention to his use of "statistical," shows that the version of the second law endorsed by Maxwell is strictly weaker than our probabilistic version. According to Maxwell, even the probable truth of the second law is limited to situations in which we deal with matter only in bulk and are unable to observe or manipulate individual molecules. Maxwell's version does not rule out a device that could, predictably and reliably, transfer heat from a cooler to a warmer body without a compensating increase in entropy. I will discuss the evidence we have for these two laws, Maxwell's and ours.