Related papers: Towards a Definition of Locality in a Manifoldlike…
Contrary to what is often stated, a fundamental spacetime discreteness need not contradict Lorentz invariance. A causal set's discreteness is in fact locally Lorentz invariant, and we recall the reasons why. For illustration, we introduce a…
Causal set theory is an intrinsically nonlocal approach to quantum gravity, inheriting its nonlocality from Lorentzian nonlocality. This nonlocality causes problems in defining differential operators -- such as the d'Alembert operator, a…
Any discrete approach to quantum gravity must provide some prescription as to how to deduce continuum properties from the discrete substructure. In the causal set approach it is straightforward to deduce timelike distances, but surprisingly…
The ideas of spacetime discreteness and causality are important in several of the popular approaches to quantum gravity. But if discreteness is accepted as an initial assumption, conflict with Lorentz invariance can be a consequence. The…
In the special theory of relativity, Lorentz invariance is extended in Minkowski spacetime from ideal inertial observers to actual observers by means of the hypothesis of locality, which postulates that accelerated observers are always…
We define criteria for a hidden variables theory to be Lorentz invariant and prove that it implies no signaling. As a result, we show that a Lorentz invariant and contextual theory (e.g., quantum field theory) must be genuinely stochastic,…
We consider Lorentzian manifolds as examples of partially ordered measure spaces, sets endowed with compatible partial order relations and measures, in this case given by the causal structure and the volume element defined by each…
A criticism sometimes made of the causal set quantum gravity program is that there is no practical scheme for identifying manifoldlike causal sets and finding embeddings of them into manifolds. A computational method for constructing an…
Contextuality in quantum physics provides a key resource for quantum information and computation. The topological approach in [Abramsky and Brandenburger, New J. Phys., 2011, Abramsky et al., CSL 2015, 2015] characterizes contextuality as…
It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that "should be viewed with the…
The causal set theory (CST) approach to quantum gravity postulates that at the most fundamental level, spacetime is discrete, with the spacetime continuum replaced by locally finite posets or "causal sets". The partial order on a causal set…
Central to the development of any new theory is the investigation of the observable consequences of the theory. In the search for quantum gravity, research in phenomenology has been dominated by models violating Lorentz invariance (LI) --…
The purpose of this paper is to explain clearly why nonlocality must be an essential part of the theory of relativity. In the standard local version of this theory, Lorentz invariance is extended to accelerated observers by assuming that…
There are numerous indications that a discrete substratum underlies continuum spacetime. Any fundamentally discrete approach to quantum gravity must provide some prescription for how continuum properties emerge from the underlying…
If quantum gravity implies a fundamental spatiotemporal discreteness, and if its ``laws of motion'' are compatible with the Lorentz transformations, then physics cannot remain local. One might expect this nonlocality to be confined to the…
A theory governing the metric and matter fields in spacetime is {\it locally causal} if the probability distribution for the fields in any region is determined solely by physical data in the region's past, i.e. it is independent of events…
The Special Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics merge in the key principle of Quantum Field Theory, the Principle of Locality. We review some examples of its ``unreasonable effectiveness'' (which shows up best in the formulation of…
The aim of this paper is to give a sharp definition of Bell's notion of local causality. To this end, first we unfold a framework, called local physical theory, integrating probabilistic and spatiotemporal concepts. Formulating local…
We investigate whether commutativity is necessary to represent relativistic locality for localization observables of relativistic quantum systems in Minkowski spacetime. A well known no-go theorem by Halvorson and Clifton shows that…
On plain physical grounds localization of relativistic quantum particles is extended to the achronal regions of Minkowski spacetime. Achronal localization fulfills automatically the requirements of causality. It constitutes the frame which…