On the "principle of the quantumness", the quantumness of Relativity, and the computational grand-unification

After reviewing recently suggested operational "principles of the quantumness", I address the problem on whether Quantum Theory (QT) and Special Relativity (SR) are unrelated theories, or instead, if the one implies the other. I show how SR can be indeed derived from causality of QT, within the computational paradigm "the universe is a huge quantum computer", reformulating QFT as a Quantum-Computational Field Theory (QCFT). In QCFT SR emerges from the fabric of the computational network, which also naturally embeds gauge invariance. In this scheme even the quantization rule and the Planck constant can in principle be derived as emergent from the underlying causal tapestry of space-time. In this way QT remains the only theory operating the huge computer of the universe. Is QCFT only a speculative tautology (theory as simulation of reality), or does it have a scientific value? The answer will come from Occam's razor, depending on the mathematical simplicity of QCFT. Here I will just start scratching the surface of QCFT, analyzing simple field theories, including Dirac's. The number of problems and unmotivated recipes that plague QFT strongly motivates us to undertake the QCFT project, since QCFT makes all such problems manifest, and forces a re-foundation of QFT.Comment: To be published on AIP Proceedings of Vaxjo conference. The ideas on Quantum-Circuit Field Theory are more recent. V4 Largely improved, with new interesting results and concepts. Dirac equation solve

Direct certification of a class of quantum simulations

One of the main challenges in the field of quantum simulation and computation is to identify ways to certify the correct functioning of a device when a classical efficient simulation is not available. Important cases are situations in which one cannot classically calculate local expectation values of state preparations efficiently. In this work, we develop weak-membership formulations of the certification of ground state preparations. We provide a non-interactive protocol for certifying ground states of frustration-free Hamiltonians based on simple energy measurements of local Hamiltonian terms. This certification protocol can be applied to classically intractable analog quantum simulations: For example, using Feynman-Kitaev Hamiltonians, one can encode universal quantum computation in such ground states. Moreover, our certification protocol is applicable to ground states encodings of IQP circuits demonstration of quantum supremacy. These can be certified efficiently when the error is polynomially bounded.Comment: 10 pages, corrected a small error in Eqs. (2) and (5