Causal categories: relativistically interacting processes

DOI10.1007/S10701-012-9646-8zbMATH Open1272.81008arXiv1107.6019OpenAlexW1985079222MaRDI QIDQ352872FDOQ352872

Raymond Lal, Bob Coecke

Publication date: 5 July 2013

Published in: Foundations of Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: A symmetric monoidal category naturally arises as the mathematical structure that organizes physical systems, processes, and composition thereof, both sequentially and in parallel. This structure admits a purely graphical calculus. This paper is concerned with the encoding of a fixed causal structure within a symmetric monoidal category: causal dependencies will correspond to topological connectedness in the graphical language. We show that correlations, either classical or quantum, force terminality of the tensor unit. We also show that well-definedness of the concept of a global state forces the monoidal product to be only partially defined, which in turn results in a relativistic covariance theorem. Except for these assumptions, at no stage do we assume anything more than purely compositional symmetric-monoidal categorical structure. We cast these two structural results in terms of a mathematical entity, which we call a `causal category'. We provide methods of constructing causal categories, and we study the consequences of these methods for the general framework of categorical quantum mechanics.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1107.6019

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zbMATH Keywords

causalitysymmetric monoidal categoriesquantum theoryprocess

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05)

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Cited In (21)

• Categorical Probabilistic Theories
• Space in Monoidal Categories
• On the Pre- and Promonoidal Structure of Spacetime
• A Categorical Reconstruction of Quantum Theory
• Transition probability spaces in loop quantum gravity
• Generalised Mermin-type non-locality arguments
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• Local causation
• Frobenius structures over Hilbert \(C^*\)-modules
• Terminality implies no-signalling\dots and much more than that
• Improvement in estimating the population mean using two-stage balanced groups ranked set sampling
• A synthetic approach to Markov kernels, conditional independence and theorems on sufficient statistics
• The CBH characterisation theorem beyond algebraic quantum theory
• Density Hypercubes, Higher Order Interference and Hyper-decoherence: A Categorical Approach
• A diagrammatic approach to information transmission in generalised switches
• Hyper-decoherence in density hypercubes
• Giving operational meaning to the superposition of causal orders
• Causality in higher order process theories

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