Related papers: Causality and quantum theory
Within quantum theory, we can create superpositions of different causal orders of events, and observe interference between them. This raises the question of whether quantum theory can produce results that would be impossible to replicate…
A new interpretation of quantum mechanics, similar to the Copenhagen interpretation, is developed from time-symmetry arguments and commonly held principles concerning time and causality. These principles, which are grounded in ideas outside…
Causal reasoning is essential to science, yet quantum theory challenges it. Quantum correlations violating Bell inequalities defy satisfactory causal explanations within the framework of classical causal models. What is more, a theory…
The idea that events obey a definite causal order is deeply rooted in our understanding of the world and at the basis of the very notion of time. But where does causal order come from, and is it a necessary property of nature? We address…
Quantum mechanics challenges our intuition on the cause-effect relations in nature. Some fundamental concepts, including Reichenbach's common cause principle or the notion of local realism, have to be reconsidered. Traditionally, this is…
Causality never gained the status of a "law" or "principle" in physics. Some recent literature even popularized the false idea that causality is a notion that should be banned from theory. Such misconception relies on an alleged…
Demonstrations of quantum entanglement which confirm the violation of Bell's inequality indicate that under certain conditions action at a distance is possible. This consequence seems to contradict the relativistic principle of causality,…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
The landscape of causal relations that can hold among a set of systems in quantum theory is richer than in classical physics. In particular, a pair of time-ordered systems can be related as cause and effect or as the effects of a common…
Understanding the causal influences that hold among parts of a system is critical both to explaining that system's natural behaviour and to controlling it through targeted interventions. In a quantum world, understanding causal relations is…
Starting with a consideration of the implication of Bell inequalities in quantum mechanics, a new quantum postulate is suggested in order to restore classical locality and causality to quantum physics: only the relative coordinates between…
It is often claimed that one cannot locate a notion of causation in fundamental physical theories. The reason most commonly given is that the dynamics of those theories do not support any distinction between the past and the future, and…
Causal structures give us a way to understand the origin of observed correlations. These were developed for classical scenarios, but quantum mechanical experiments necessitate their generalisation. Here we study causal structures in a broad…
The principle of common cause is discussed as a possible fundamental principle of physics. Some revisions of Reichenbach's formulation of the principle are given, which lead to a version given by Bell. Various similar forms are compared and…
Quantum theory revolutionised physics by introducing a new fundamental constant and a new mathematical framework to describe the observed phenomena at the atomic scale. These new concepts run counter to our familiar notions of classical…
The Hilbert space formalism describes causality as a statistical relation between initial experimental conditions and final measurement outcomes, expressed by the inner products of state vectors representing these conditions. This…
In an exact quantum-mechanical framework, we show that expectation values of the second-quantized electro-magnetic fields in the Coulomb gauge, and in the presence of classical sources, automatically lead to causal and retarded…
In causal set theory, there are three ambiguous concepts that this article tries to provide a solution to resolve these ambiguities. These three ambiguities in Planck's scale are: the causal relationship between events, the position of the…
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…
Because of the non-locality of quantum entanglement, realist approaches to completing quantum mechanics have implications for our conception of space. Quantum gravity also is expected to predict phenomena in which the locality of classical…