On reverse hypercontractivity

We study the notion of reverse hypercontractivity. We show that reverse hypercontractive inequalities are implied by standard hypercontractive inequalities as well as by the modified log-Sobolev inequality. Our proof is based on a new comparison lemma for Dirichlet forms and an extension of the Strook-Varapolos inequality. A consequence of our analysis is that {\em all} simple operators L=Id-\E as well as their tensors satisfy uniform reverse hypercontractive inequalities. That is, for all $q<p<1$ and every positive valued function $f$ for $t \geq \log \frac{1-q}{1-p}$ we have $\| e^{-tL}f\|_{q} \geq \| f\|_{p}$. This should be contrasted with the case of hypercontractive inequalities for simple operators where $t$ is known to depend not only on $p$ and $q$ but also on the underlying space. The new reverse hypercontractive inequalities established here imply new mixing and isoperimetric results for short random walks in product spaces, for certain card-shufflings, for Glauber dynamics in high-temperatures spin systems as well as for queueing processes. The inequalities further imply a quantitative Arrow impossibility theorem for general product distributions and inverse polynomial bounds in the number of players for the non-interactive correlation distillation problem with $m$-sided dice.Comment: Final revision. Incorporates referee's comments. The proof of appendix B has been corrected. A shorter version of this article will appear in GAF

The simplest causal inequalities and their violation

In a scenario where two parties share, act on and exchange some physical resource, the assumption that the parties' actions are ordered according to a definite causal structure yields constraints on the possible correlations that can be established. We show that the set of correlations that are compatible with a definite causal order forms a polytope, whose facets define causal inequalities. We fully characterize this causal polytope in the simplest case of bipartite correlations with binary inputs and outputs. We find two families of nonequivalent causal inequalities; both can be violated in the recently introduced framework of process matrices, which extends the standard quantum formalism by relaxing the implicit assumption of a fixed causal structure. Our work paves the way to a more systematic investigation of causal inequalities in a theory-independent way, and of their violation within the framework of process matrices.Comment: 7 + 4 pages, 2 figure

Shifting the Quantum-Classical Boundary: Theory and Experiment for Statistically Classical Optical Fields

The growing recognition that entanglement is not exclusively a quantum property, and does not even originate with Schr\"odinger's famous remark about it [Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. 31, 555 (1935)], prompts examination of its role in marking the quantum-classical boundary. We have done this by subjecting correlations of classical optical fields to new Bell-analysis experiments, and report here values of the Bell parameter greater than ${\cal B} = 2.54$. This is many standard deviations outside the limit ${\cal B} = 2$ established by the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt (CHSH) Bell inequality [Phys. Rev. Lett. 23, 880 (1969)], in agreement with our theoretical classical prediction, and not far from the Tsirelson limit ${\cal B} = 2.828...$. These results cast a new light on the standard quantum-classical boundary description, and suggest a reinterpretation of it.Comment: Comments and Remarks are warmly welcome! arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1406.333