English

A diagrammatic language for the Causaloid framework

Quantum Physics 2024-07-02 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

The Causaloid framework is an operational approach aimed to house both the radical aspects of General Relativity -- dynamic causal structure, and Quantum Theory -- indefiniteness, to provide a scaffolding that might be suitable for Quantum Gravity by providing a landscape of theories that allow for indefinite causal structure. One may consider it as a generalisation of generalised probability theories (or GPTs) where a priori regions are not assumed to have any given causal relationship, to incorporate the possibility of indefinite causal structure. Since its conception, there have been many advances in the field of indefinite causal structure mostly stemming from the work of Chiribella et al. on the quantum switch and supermaps and from Oreshkov et al. on causal inequalities and process matrices. These approaches have systems moving along wires and use Hilbert space structure. They violate the standard causality constraints of Quantum Theory and, in this sense, can be regarded as post-quantum. The Causaloid approach does not necessarily have systems moving along wires or Hilbert spaces. This is the first paper in a trilogy of papers aiming to close the gap between the Causaloid (that allows for GPTs) and post-quantum studies that employ Hilbert spaces. To do so in the present paper, we provide a diagrammatic language for the Causaloid framework along with new terminology for the three levels of physical compression (called Tomographic, Compositional, and Meta compression).

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2407.01522,
  title  = {A diagrammatic language for the Causaloid framework},
  author = {Nitica Sakharwade and Lucien Hardy},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.01522},
  year   = {2024}
}

Comments

29 pages, three figures, and many diagrammatic equations

R2 v1 2026-06-28T17:25:20.337Z