Fabio Costa

Universal decoherence due to gravitational time dilation

Gravity and quantum mechanics are expected to meet at extreme energy scales, but time dilation could induce decoherence even at low energies affecting microscopic objects—a prospect that could be tested in future matter-wave experiments.

Computational advantage from quantum-controlled ordering of gates.

It is usually assumed that a quantum computation is performed by applying gates in a specific order. One can relax this assumption by allowing a control quantum system to switch the order in which the gates are applied. This provides a more general kind of quantum computing that allows transformations on blackbox quantum gates that are impossible in a circuit with fixed order. Here we show that this model of quantum computing is physically realizable, by proposing an interferometric setup that can implement such a quantum control of the order between the gates. We show that this new resource provides a reduction in computational complexity: we propose a problem that can be solved by using O(n) blackbox queries, whereas the best known quantum algorithm with fixed order between the gates requires O(n^{2}) queries. Furthermore, we conjecture that solving this problem in a classical computer takes exponential time, which may be of independent interest.

Experimental test of nonlocal causality

Causation at a distance does not explain quantum correlations. Explaining observations in terms of causes and effects is central to empirical science. However, correlations between entangled quantum particles seem to defy such an explanation. This implies that some of the fundamental assumptions of causal explanations have to give way. We consider a relaxation of one of these assumptions, Bell’s local causality, by allowing outcome dependence: a direct causal influence between the outcomes of measurements of remote parties. We use interventional data from a photonic experiment to bound the strength of this causal influence in a two-party Bell scenario, and observational data from a Bell-type inequality test for the considered models. Our results demonstrate the incompatibility of quantum mechanics with a broad class of nonlocal causal models, which includes Bell-local models as a special case. Recovering a classical causal picture of quantum correlations thus requires an even more radical modification of our classical notion of cause and effect.

General relativistic effects in quantum interference of photons

Quantum mechanics and general relativity have been extensively and independently confirmed in many experiments. However, the interplay of the two theories has never been tested: all experiments that measured the influence of gravity on quantum systems are consistent with non-relativistic, Newtonian gravity. On the other hand, all tests of general relativity can be described within the framework of classical physics. Here we discuss a quantum interference experiment with single photons that can probe quantum mechanics in curved space-time. We consider a single photon traveling in superposition along two paths in an interferometer, with each arm experiencing a different gravitational time dilation. If the difference in the time dilations is comparable with the photon’s coherence time, the visibility of the quantum interference is predicted to drop, while for shorter time dilations the effect of gravity will result only in a relative phase shift between the two arms. We discuss what aspects of the interplay between quantum mechanics and general relativity are probed in such experiments and analyze the experimental feasibility.

Renormalized thermal entropy in field theory

Standard entropy calculations in quantum field theory, when applied to a subsystem of definite volume, exhibit area-dependent UV divergences that make a thermodynamic interpretation troublesome. In this paper we define a renormalized entropy which is related with the Newton-Wigner position operator. Accordingly, whenever we trace over a region of space, we trace away degrees of freedom that are localized according to Newton-Wigner localization but not in the usual sense. We consider a free scalar field in d+1 spacetime dimensions prepared in a thermal state and we show that our entropy is free of divergences and has a perfectly sound thermodynamic behavior. In the high temperature/big volume limit our results agree with the standard QFT calculations once the divergent contributions are subtracted from the latter. In the limit of low temperature/small volume the entropy goes to zero but with a different dependence on the temperature.

Entanglement between smeared field operators in the Klein-Gordon vacuum

Quantum field theory is the application of quantum physics to fields. It provides a theoretical framework widely used in particle physics and condensed matter physics. One of the most distinct features of quantum physics with respect to classical physics is entanglement or the existence of strong correlations between subsystems that can even be spacelike separated. In quantum fields, observables restricted to a region of space define a subsystem. While there are proofs on the existence of local observables that would allow a violation of Bells inequalities in the vacuum states of quantum fields as well as some explicit but technically demanding schemes requiring an extreme fine-tuning of the interaction between the fields and detectors, an experimentally accessible entanglement witness for quantum fields is still missing. Here we introduce smeared field operators which allow reducing the vacuum to a system of two effective bosonic modes. The introduction of such collective observables is motivated by the fact that no physical probe has access to fields in single spatial (mathematical) points but rather smeared over finite volumes. We first give explicit collective observables whose correlations reveal vacuum entanglement in the Klein-Gordon field. We then show that the critical distance between the two regions of space above which two effective bosonic modes become separable is of the order of the Compton wavelength of the particle corresponding to the massive Klein-Gordon field.

Renormalized entropy of entanglement in relativistic field theory

Entanglement is defined between subsystems of a quantum system, and at fixed time two regions of space can be viewed as two subsystems of a relativistic quantum field. The entropy of entanglement between such subsystems is ill-defined unless an ultraviolet cutoff is introduced, but it still diverges in the continuum limit. This behavior is generic for arbitrary finite-energy states, hence a conceptual tension with the finite entanglement entropy typical of nonrelativistic quantum systems. We introduce a novel approach to explain the transition from infinite to finite entanglement, based on coarse graining the spatial resolution of the detectors measuring the field state. We show that states with a finite number of particles become localized, allowing an identification between a region of space and the nonrelativistic degrees of freedom of the particles therein contained, and that the renormalized entropy of finite-energy states reduces to the entanglement entropy of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.

Causation does not explain contextuality

Realist interpretations of quantum mechanics presuppose the existence of elements of reality that are independent of the actions used to reveal them. Such a view is challenged by several no-go theorems that show quantum correlations cannot be explained by non-contextual ontological models, where physical properties are assumed to exist prior to and independently of the act of measurement. However, all such contextuality proofs assume a traditional notion of causal structure, where causal influence flows from past to future according to ordinary dynamical laws. This leaves open the question of whether the apparent contextuality of quantum mechanics is simply the signature of some exotic causal structure, where the future might affect the past or distant systems might get correlated due to non-local constraints. Here we show that quantum predictions require a deeper form of contextuality: even allowing for arbitrary causal structure, no model can explain quantum correlations from non-contextual ontological properties of the world, be they initial states, dynamical laws, or global constraints.

A quantum causal discovery algorithm

Finding a causal model for a set of classical variables is now a well-established task—but what about the quantum equivalent? Even the notion of a quantum causal model is controversial. Here, we present a causal discovery algorithm for quantum systems. The input to the algorithm is a process matrix describing correlations between quantum events. Its output consists of different levels of information about the underlying causal model. Our algorithm determines whether the process is causally ordered by grouping the events into causally ordered non-signaling sets. It detects if all relevant common causes are included in the process, which we label Markovian, or alternatively if some causal relations are mediated through some external memory. For a Markovian process, it outputs a causal model, namely the causal relations and the corresponding mechanisms, represented as quantum states and channels. Our algorithm opens the route to more general quantum causal discovery methods.Quantum causality: discovering cause–effect relations in quantum systemsA new algorithm can be used to infer the causal structures hidden in quantum systems. As opposed to the classical world, the intricacies of quantum physics make it difficult to easily reconstruct the network of cause–effect relations among interacting quantum systems. Christina Giarmatzi and Fabio Costa from the University of Queensland now report an approach for discovering systematically the causal relations and associated mechanisms in a quantum process. In doing so, their algorithm determines if all common causes for the dynamics are included in the system, or if they are external. This can be used to identify hidden sources of correlations that might introduce errors in quantum devices.

Spatial modes for testing indefinite causal order

The fundamental notion of fixed order between two events is challenged by formulations of quantum mechanics that makes no reference to a global time. The indefinite causal order arising from these formalisms can be realised using the quantum switch, a device where two operations can act in two different orders simultaneously. Similar to entanglement verification which employ entanglement witness, we verify indefinite causal order using a causal witness. In our experiment, we use polarisation as a control for the order of the operations that act on the spatial mode of a photon. We measure a causal witness value of -0.16±0.013, below the threshold of zero, thus demonstrating indefinite causal order in the quantum switch.