PHILIPP HOHN - Quantum theory from rules on information acquisition

Philipp Höhn.

Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (Vienna)

Jueves 22/02/2018, 14 hs.

Aula Seminario, 2do piso, Pab. I.

In contrast to relativity, quantum theory has evaded a commonly accepted apprehension, in part because of a long-lasting lack of physical statements that fully characterise it. However, the past decade has seen considerable progress in remedying this situation thanks to a wave of derivations of quantum theory from operational postulates, aiming at answering Wheeler's question "why the quantum?''. In this talk, I will review how the formalism of quantum theory (for arbitrarily many qubits) can be reconstructed from operational rules restricting an observer’s acquisition of information. This reconstruction offers an informational explanation for the architecture of the theory and specifically for its correlation structure. In particular, it explains entanglement, monogamy and non-locality compellingly from limited accessible information and complementarity. Time permitting, I may also discuss how, as a byproduct, it unravels new `conserved informational charges' from complementarity relations that characterise the unitary group and the set of pure states. (Based on arXiv:1612.06849, arXiv:1412.8323, arXiv:1511.01130.)