12,947 research outputs found
Protected gates for topological quantum field theories
We study restrictions on locality-preserving unitary logical gates for
topological quantum codes in two spatial dimensions. A locality-preserving
operation is one which maps local operators to local operators --- for example,
a constant-depth quantum circuit of geometrically local gates, or evolution for
a constant time governed by a geometrically-local bounded-strength Hamiltonian.
Locality-preserving logical gates of topological codes are intrinsically fault
tolerant because spatially localized errors remain localized, and hence
sufficiently dilute errors remain correctable. By invoking general properties
of two-dimensional topological field theories, we find that the
locality-preserving logical gates are severely limited for codes which admit
non-abelian anyons; in particular, there are no locality-preserving logical
gates on the torus or the sphere with M punctures if the braiding of anyons is
computationally universal. Furthermore, for Ising anyons on the M-punctured
sphere, locality-preserving gates must be elements of the logical Pauli group.
We derive these results by relating logical gates of a topological code to
automorphisms of the Verlinde algebra of the corresponding anyon model, and by
requiring the logical gates to be compatible with basis changes in the logical
Hilbert space arising from local F-moves and the mapping class group.Comment: 50 pages, many figures, v3: updated to match published versio
Disordered locality in loop quantum gravity states
We show that loop quantum gravity suffers from a potential problem with
non-locality, coming from a mismatch between micro-locality, as defined by the
combinatorial structures of their microscopic states, and macro-locality,
defined by the metric which emerges from the low energy limit. As a result, the
low energy limit may suffer from a disordered locality characterized by
identifications of far away points. We argue that if such defects in locality
are rare enough they will be difficult to detect.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, revision with extended discussion of result
Physics Without Physics: The Power of Information-theoretical Principles
David Finkelstein was very fond of the new information-theoretic paradigm of
physics advocated by John Archibald Wheeler and Richard Feynman. Only recently,
however, the paradigm has concretely shown its full power, with the derivation
of quantum theory (Chiribella et al., Phys. Rev. A 84:012311, 2011; D'Ariano et
al., 2017) and of free quantum field theory (D'Ariano and Perinotti, Phys. Rev.
A 90:062106, 2014; Bisio et al., Phys. Rev. A 88:032301, 2013; Bisio et al.,
Ann. Phys. 354:244, 2015; Bisio et al., Ann. Phys. 368:177, 2016) from
informational principles. The paradigm has opened for the first time the
possibility of avoiding physical primitives in the axioms of the physical
theory, allowing a refoundation of the whole physics over logically solid
grounds. In addition to such methodological value, the new
information-theoretic derivation of quantum field theory is particularly
interesting for establishing a theoretical framework for quantum gravity, with
the idea of obtaining gravity itself as emergent from the quantum information
processing, as also suggested by the role played by information in the
holographic principle (Susskind, J. Math. Phys. 36:6377, 1995; Bousso, Rev.
Mod. Phys. 74:825, 2002). In this paper I review how free quantum field theory
is derived without using mechanical primitives, including space-time, special
relativity, Hamiltonians, and quantization rules. The theory is simply provided
by the simplest quantum algorithm encompassing a countable set of quantum
systems whose network of interactions satisfies the three following simple
principles: homogeneity, locality, and isotropy. The inherent discrete nature
of the informational derivation leads to an extension of quantum field theory
in terms of a quantum cellular automata and quantum walks. A simple heuristic
argument sets the scale to the Planck one, and the observed regime is that of
small wavevectors ...Comment: 34 pages, 8 figures. Paper for in memoriam of David Finkelstei
Order-Invariant First-Order Logic over Hollow Trees
We show that the expressive power of order-invariant first-order logic collapses to first-order logic over hollow trees. A hollow tree is an unranked ordered tree where every non leaf node has at most four adjacent nodes: two siblings (left and right) and its first and last children. In particular there is no predicate for the linear order among siblings nor for the descendant relation. Moreover only the first and last nodes of a siblinghood are linked to their parent node, and the parent-child relation cannot be completely reconstructed in first-order
Local, Smooth, and Consistent Jacobi Set Simplification
The relation between two Morse functions defined on a common domain can be
studied in terms of their Jacobi set. The Jacobi set contains points in the
domain where the gradients of the functions are aligned. Both the Jacobi set
itself as well as the segmentation of the domain it induces have shown to be
useful in various applications. Unfortunately, in practice functions often
contain noise and discretization artifacts causing their Jacobi set to become
unmanageably large and complex. While there exist techniques to simplify Jacobi
sets, these are unsuitable for most applications as they lack fine-grained
control over the process and heavily restrict the type of simplifications
possible.
In this paper, we introduce a new framework that generalizes critical point
cancellations in scalar functions to Jacobi sets in two dimensions. We focus on
simplifications that can be realized by smooth approximations of the
corresponding functions and show how this implies simultaneously simplifying
contiguous subsets of the Jacobi set. These extended cancellations form the
atomic operations in our framework, and we introduce an algorithm to
successively cancel subsets of the Jacobi set with minimal modifications
according to some user-defined metric. We prove that the algorithm is correct
and terminates only once no more local, smooth and consistent simplifications
are possible. We disprove a previous claim on the minimal Jacobi set for
manifolds with arbitrary genus and show that for simply connected domains, our
algorithm reduces a given Jacobi set to its simplest configuration.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figure
Group field theories for all loop quantum gravity
Group field theories represent a 2nd quantized reformulation of the loop
quantum gravity state space and a completion of the spin foam formalism. States
of the canonical theory, in the traditional continuum setting, have support on
graphs of arbitrary valence. On the other hand, group field theories have
usually been defined in a simplicial context, thus dealing with a restricted
set of graphs. In this paper, we generalize the combinatorics of group field
theories to cover all the loop quantum gravity state space. As an explicit
example, we describe the GFT formulation of the KKL spin foam model, as well as
a particular modified version. We show that the use of tensor model tools
allows for the most effective construction. In order to clarify the
mathematical basis of our construction and of the formalisms with which we
deal, we also give an exhaustive description of the combinatorial structures
entering spin foam models and group field theories, both at the level of the
boundary states and of the quantum amplitudes.Comment: version published in New Journal of Physic
From euclidean field theory to quantum field theory
In order to construct examples for interacting quantum field theory models,
the methods of euclidean field theory turned out to be powerful tools since
they make use of the techniques of classical statistical mechanics.
Starting from an appropriate set of euclidean n-point functions (Schwinger
distributions), a Wightman theory can be reconstructed by an application of the
famous Osterwalder-Schrader reconstruction theorem. This procedure (Wick
rotation), which relates classical statistical mechanics and quantum field
theory, is, however, somewhat subtle. It relies on the analytic properties of
the euclidean n-point functions.
We shall present here a C*-algebraic version of the Osterwalder-Scharader
reconstruction theorem. We shall see that, via our reconstruction scheme, a
Haag-Kastler net of bounded operators can directly be reconstructed.
Our considerations also include objects, like Wilson loop variables, which
are not point-like localized objects like distributions. This point of view may
also be helpful for constructing gauge theories.Comment: 35 page
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