Related papers: Unilateral determination of causal order in a cycl…
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…
Requiring that the causal structure between different parties is well-defined imposes constraints on the correlations they can establish, which define so-called causal correlations. Some of these are known to have a "dynamical" causal order…
Investigating the role of causal order in quantum mechanics has recently revealed that the causal distribution of events may not be a-priori well-defined in quantum theory. While this has triggered a growing interest on the theoretical…
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…
Recent frameworks describing quantum mechanics in the absence of a global causal order admit the existence of causally indefinite processes, where it is impossible to ascribe causal order for events A and B. These frameworks even allow for…
We consider decision problems under uncertainty where the options available to a decision maker and the resulting outcome are related through a causal mechanism which is unknown to the decision maker. We ask how a decision maker can learn…
In theories of communication, it is usually presumed that the involved parties perform actions in a fixed causal order. However, practical and fundamental reasons can induce uncertainties in the causal order. Here we show that a maximal…
In a scenario where two parties share, act on and exchange some physical resource, the assumption that the parties' actions are ordered according to a definite causal structure yields constraints on the possible correlations that can be…
It has been shown that it is theoretically possible for there to exist quantum and classical processes in which the operations performed by separate parties do not occur in a well-defined causal order. A central question is whether and how…
Recent developments in the formalisation of quantum causal structures have made it possible to test and compare hypotheses about causal structure empirically, rather than being a-priori assumptions. Such differences in causal structure may…
Classically the causal order of two timelike separated events A and B is fixed -- either A before B or B before A. This is no longer true in quantum theory, where it is possible to encounter superpositions of causal orders. The quantum…
It was recently suggested that causal structures are both dynamical, because of general relativity, and indefinite, due to quantum theory. The process matrix formalism furnishes a framework for quantum mechanics on indefinite causal…
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…
We develop rigorous notions of causality and causal separability in the process framework introduced in [Oreshkov, Costa, Brukner, Nat. Commun. 3, 1092 (2012)], which describes correlations between separate local experiments without a prior…
In quantum mechanics events can happen in no definite causal order: in practice this can be verified by measuring a causal witness, in the same way that an entanglement witness verifies entanglement. Indefinite causal order can be observed…
Quantum theory is in principle compatible with scenarios where physical processes occur in an indefinite order, potentially yielding advantages in a broad range of information processing tasks. However, advantages in communication, the most…
In general relativity, the causal structure between events is dynamical, but it is definite and observer-independent; events are point-like and the membership of an event A in the future or past light-cone of an event B is an…
The standard formulation of quantum theory assumes that events are ordered is a background global causal structure. Recently in Ref.[$\href{http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n10/full/ncomms2076.html}{Nat. Commun. {\bf3}, 1092…
Can causal relations be subject to quantum indefiniteness, similar to other physical properties? The process-matrix framework formalises this possibility: valid processes are defined by what local laboratories can implement, without…
It is well-known that if one assumes quantum theory to hold locally, then processes with indefinite causal order and cyclic causal structures become feasible. Here, we study qualitative limitations on causal structures and correlations…