Quantum Theory and Beyond: Is Entanglement Special?

By B. Dakić, Č. Brukner. 2009

252 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Quantum theory makes the most accurate empirical predictions and yet it lacks simple, comprehensible physical principles from which the theory can be uniquely derived. A broad class of probabilistic theories exist which all share some features with quantum theory, such as probabilistic predictions for individual outcomes (indeterminism), the impossibility of information transfer faster than speed of light (no-signaling) or the impossibility of copying of unknown states (no-cloning). A vast majority of attempts to find physical principles behind quantum theory either fall short of deriving the theory uniquely from the principles or are based on abstract mathematical assumptions that require themselves a more conclusive physical motivation. Here, we show that classical probability theory and quantum theory can be reconstructed from three reasonable axioms: (1) (Information capacity) All systems with information carrying capacity of one bit are equivalent. (2) (Locality) The state of a composite system is completely determined by measurements on its subsystems. (3) (Reversibility) Between any two pure states there exists a reversible transformation. If one requires the transformation from the last axiom to be continuous, one separates quantum theory from the classical probabilistic one. A remarkable result following from our reconstruction is that no probability theory other than quantum theory can exhibit entanglement without contradicting one or more axioms.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Physiology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/be3a387014a0e8fa41190cb7b98c504666a6f9e5

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Citations in the corpus

Higher-order interference and single-system postulates characterizing quantum theory (2014, background): “These range from studies of the information processing capabilities of theories similar to quantum theory [7, 12, 34–36], to reconstructions of the formalism from information-theoretic principles [40, 41, 46, 48, 49, 67], to no-go theorems regarding interpretations and generalizations of the formali”
Reformulating and Reconstructing Quantum Theory (2011, methodology): “Ignoring this technical gap in the proof of [17], the main advantage of the present work over the work of Dakić and Brukner is that deeper reasons are given for all the points on the hypersphere representing pure states.”
QBism, the Perimeter of Quantum Bayesianism (2010, background): “But of Hilbert spaces themselves, particularly their distinguishing characteristic one from the other, dimension, (Hardy [83,84] and Dakic and Brukner [85] are examples of foundational efforts that also emphasize this quantum analog to what Eotvos tested on platinum and copper [78].”
A derivation of quantum theory from physical requirements (2010, methodology): “This work is particularly close to [4, 19], from which it takes some material.”