2021/04/30 by Aditya Iyer, Eduardo O. Dias, Vlatko Vedral
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Algorithm #Causality (physics) #Coherence (philosophical gambling strategy) #Computer science #Context (archaeology) #Determinism #Event (particle physics) #History #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Information and Cryptography #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #State (computer science) #Statistical physics #Superposition principle #Theoretical computer science #Theoretical physics #gr-qc #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.105.l010202
published as Phys. Rev. A 105, L010202, 14 January 2022
openalex publication_date 2022/01/14 · arxiv created 2022/03/01 · arxiv updated 2022/03/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
By representing an event as the joint state of a detector-timer couple that interact with a system, we recover the familiar tensor product structure, used to describe spatially separated systems, in the context of timelike events. Furthermore, with this approach, we extend the superposition principle to the moment of occurrence of events. We then outline quantum signatures of causality that manifest through coherence in the detector state and correlation functions of time operators. Finally, we expand the scope of quantum information theoretic measures of state discrimination and information content, commonly used to characterize spatially separated systems, to events in spacetime. For causally connected events, we illustrate a deterministic relationship between events (akin to spatially entangled physical systems) where observing a previous event (one subsystem), enables us to delineate a later event (the other subsystem).