A de Finetti theorem for quantum causal structures

What does it mean for a causal structure to be `unknown'? Can we even talk about `repetitions' of an experiment without prior knowledge of causal relations? And under what conditions can we say that a set of processes with arbitrary, possibly indefinite, causal structure are independent and identically distributed? Similar questions for classical probabilities, quantum states, and quantum channels are beautifully answered by so-called "de Finetti theorems", which connect a simple and easy-to-justify condition – symmetry under exchange – with a very particular multipartite structure: a mixture of identical states/channels. Here we extend the result to processes with arbitrary causal structure, including indefinite causal order and multi-time, non-Markovian processes applicable to noisy quantum devices. The result also implies a new class of de Finetti theorems for quantum states subject to a large class of linear constraints, which can be of independent interest.

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Publication Details

Journal
Quantum
Published
2025-02-11
DOI
https://doi.org/10.22331/q-2025-02-11-1628
Primary Topic
Quantum Mechanics and Applications
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

A de Finetti theorem for quantum causal structures

Jonathan Barrett, Sally Shrapnel, Fabio Costa
Quantum
Quantum Mechanics and Applications
article

A de Finetti theorem for quantum causal structures

Jonathan Barrett, Sally Shrapnel, Fabio Costa
article en

Abstract

What does it mean for a causal structure to be `unknown'? Can we even talk about `repetitions' of an experiment without prior knowledge of causal relations? And under what conditions can we say that a set of processes with arbitrary, possibly indefinite, causal structure are independent and identically distributed? Similar questions for classical probabilities, quantum states, and quantum channels are beautifully answered by so-called "de Finetti theorems", which connect a simple and easy-to-justify condition – symmetry under exchange – with a very particular multipartite structure: a mixture of identical states/channels. Here we extend the result to processes with arbitrary causal structure, including indefinite causal order and multi-time, non-Markovian processes applicable to noisy quantum devices. The result also implies a new class of de Finetti theorems for quantum states subject to a large class of linear constraints, which can be of independent interest.

QuantumVol. 9
Stockholm University (SE), The University of Queensland (AU), University of Oxford (GB), ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (AU), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (SE)
John Templeton Foundation, NordForsk, Australian Research Council
Openalex Percentile: Top 98%
Quantum Mechanics and Applications
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