Quantum Stopwatch: How To Store Time in a Quantum Memory

Quantum mechanics imposes a fundamental tradeoff between the accuracy of time measurements and the size of the systems used as clocks. When the measurements of different time intervals are combined, the errors due to the finite clock size accumulate, resulting in an overall inaccuracy that grows with the complexity of the setup. Here we introduce a method that in principle eludes the accumulation of errors by coherently transferring information from a quantum clock to a quantum memory of the smallest possible size. Our method could be used to measure the total duration of a sequence of events with enhanced accuracy, and to reduce the amount of quantum communication needed to stabilize clocks in a quantum network.Comment: 10 + 5 pages, 3 figure

Quantum correlations require multipartite information principles

Identifying which correlations among distant observers are possible within our current description of Nature, based on quantum mechanics, is a fundamental problem in Physics. Recently, information concepts have been proposed as the key ingredient to characterize the set of quantum correlations. Novel information principles, such as, information causality or non-trivial communication complexity, have been introduced in this context and successfully applied to some concrete scenarios. We show in this work a fundamental limitation of this approach: no principle based on bipartite information concepts is able to single out the set of quantum correlations for an arbitrary number of parties. Our results reflect the intricate structure of quantum correlations and imply that new and intrinsically multipartite information concepts are needed for their full understanding.Comment: Appendix adde

Information Causality, the Tsirelson Bound, and the 'Being-Thus' of Things

The principle of `information causality' can be used to derive an upper bound---known as the `Tsirelson bound'---on the strength of quantum mechanical correlations, and has been conjectured to be a foundational principle of nature. To date, however, it has not been sufficiently motivated to play such a foundational role. The motivations that have so far been given are, as I argue, either unsatisfactorily vague or appeal to little if anything more than intuition. Thus in this paper I consider whether some way might be found to successfully motivate the principle. And I propose that a compelling way of so doing is to understand it as a generalisation of Einstein's principle of the mutually independent existence---the `being-thus'---of spatially distant things. In particular I first describe an argument, due to Demopoulos, to the effect that the so-called `no-signalling' condition can be viewed as a generalisation of Einstein's principle that is appropriate for an irreducibly statistical theory such as quantum mechanics. I then argue that a compelling way to motivate information causality is to in turn consider it as a further generalisation of the Einsteinian principle that is appropriate for a theory of communication. I describe, however, some important conceptual obstacles that must yet be overcome if the project of establishing information causality as a foundational principle of nature is to succeed.Comment: '*' footnote added to page 1; 24 pages, 1 figure; Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physic

Information and the reconstruction of quantum physics

The reconstruction of quantum physics has been connected with the interpretation of the quantum formalism, and has continued to be so with the recent deeper consideration of the relation of information to quantum states and processes. This recent form of reconstruction has mainly involved conceiving quantum theory on the basis of informational principles, providing new perspectives on physical correlations and entanglement that can be used to encode information. By contrast to the traditional, interpretational approach to the foundations of quantum mechanics, which attempts directly to establish the meaning of the elements of the theory and often touches on metaphysical issues, the newer, more purely reconstructive approach sometimes defers this task, focusing instead on the mathematical derivation of the theoretical apparatus from simple principles or axioms. In its most pure form, this sort of theory reconstruction is fundamentally the mathematical derivation of the elements of theory from explicitly presented, often operational principles involving a minimum of extra‐mathematical content. Here, a representative series of specifically information‐based treatments—from partial reconstructions that make connections with information to rigorous axiomatizations, including those involving the theories of generalized probability and abstract systems—is reviewed.Accepted manuscrip

Quantum Correlations and Quantum Non-Locality: A Review and a Few New Ideas

In this paper we make an extensive description of quantum non-locality, one of the most intriguing and fascinating facets of quantum mechanics. After a general presentation of several studies on this subject, we consider if quantum non-locality, and the friction it carries with special relativity, can eventually find a "solution" by considering higher dimensional spaces.Comment: 1

No-signaling, dynamical independence, and the local observability principle

Within a general operational framework I show that a-causality at a distance of "local actions" (the so-called "no-signaling") is a direct consequence of commutativity of local transformations, i.e. of dynamical independence. On the other hand, the tensor product of Quantum Mechanics is not just a consequence of such dynamical independence, but needs in addition the Local Observability Principle.Comment: Presented at the conference "Theory and Technology in Quantum Information, Communication, Computation and Cryptography", Trieste SISSA, June 2006. Submitted to J. Phys. A. Math. Ge