A de Finetti theorem for quantum causal structures
What does it mean for a causal structure to be `unknown'? Can we even talk about `repetitions' of an experiment without prior knowledge of causal relations? And under what conditions can we say that a set of processes with arbitrary, possibly indefinite, causal structure are independent an...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Verein zur Förderung des Open Access Publizierens in den Quantenwissenschaften
2025-02-01
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| Series: | Quantum |
| Online Access: | https://quantum-journal.org/papers/q-2025-02-11-1628/pdf/ |
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| Summary: | What does it mean for a causal structure to be `unknown'? Can we even talk about `repetitions' of an experiment without prior knowledge of causal relations? And under what conditions can we say that a set of processes with arbitrary, possibly indefinite, causal structure are independent and identically distributed? Similar questions for classical probabilities, quantum states, and quantum channels are beautifully answered by so-called "de Finetti theorems", which connect a simple and easy-to-justify condition – symmetry under exchange – with a very particular multipartite structure: a mixture of identical states/channels. Here we extend the result to processes with arbitrary causal structure, including indefinite causal order and multi-time, non-Markovian processes applicable to noisy quantum devices. The result also implies a new class of de Finetti theorems for quantum states subject to a large class of linear constraints, which can be of independent interest. |
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| ISSN: | 2521-327X |