English

Memory cost of temporal correlations

Quantum Physics 2019-09-16 v2

Abstract

A possible notion of nonclassicality for single systems can be defined on the basis of the notion of memory cost of classically simulating probabilities observed in a temporal sequence of measurements. We further explore this idea in a theory-independent framework, namely, from the perspective of general probability theories (GPTs), which includes classical and quantum theory as special examples. Under the assumption that each system has a finite memory capacity, identified with the maximal number of states perfectly distinguishable with a single measurement, we investigate what are the temporal correlations achievable with different theories, namely, classical, quantum, and GPTs beyond quantum mechanics. Already for the simplest nontrivial scenario, we derive inequalities able to distinguish temporal correlations where the underlying system is classical, quantum, or more general.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1902.06517,
  title  = {Memory cost of temporal correlations},
  author = {Costantino Budroni and Gabriel Fagundes and Matthias Kleinmann},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1902.06517},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

15 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-23T07:43:36.125Z