Dear group,
Tomorrow, Thursday, we have one more meeting. Borivoje, who is a visitor in
our group for this month, will be presenting a talk tomorrow (see Title and
Abstract below). Hope you can make it. The talk will be at 1:30pm in the
Division Room M102.
I will announce the details for our regular Friday's group meeting tomorrow.
I am up this time :).
Cheers,
*Details Borivoje's talk*
Title: Probabilistic theories: Classical, Quantum and Beyond Quantum
Abstract:
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.
--
Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz
Ph.D. Candidate in Chemical Physics.
Harvard University
12 Oxford St #482, Cambridge, MA, 02138.
perdomo(a)fas.harvard.edu
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