Retrocausal capacity of a quantum channel

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Ji, Kaiyuan, Lloyd, Seth, Wilde, Mark M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Ji, Kaiyuan
Lloyd, Seth
Wilde, Mark M.
author_facet Ji, Kaiyuan
Lloyd, Seth
Wilde, Mark M.
contents We study the capacity of a quantum channel for retrocausal communication, where messages are transmitted backward in time, from a sender in the future to a receiver in the past, through a noisy postselected closed timelike curve (P-CTC) mathematically represented by the channel. We completely characterize the one-shot retrocausal quantum and classical capacities, and we show that the corresponding asymptotic capacities are equal to the average and sum, respectively, of the channel's max-information and its regularized Doeblin information. This endows these information measures with a novel operational interpretation. Furthermore, our characterization can be generalized beyond quantum channels to all completely positive maps. This imposes information-theoretic limits on transmitting messages via postselected-teleportation-like mechanisms with arbitrary initial- and final-state boundary conditions, including those considered in various black-hole final-state models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_08965
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Retrocausal capacity of a quantum channel
Ji, Kaiyuan
Lloyd, Seth
Wilde, Mark M.
Quantum Physics
Information Theory
We study the capacity of a quantum channel for retrocausal communication, where messages are transmitted backward in time, from a sender in the future to a receiver in the past, through a noisy postselected closed timelike curve (P-CTC) mathematically represented by the channel. We completely characterize the one-shot retrocausal quantum and classical capacities, and we show that the corresponding asymptotic capacities are equal to the average and sum, respectively, of the channel's max-information and its regularized Doeblin information. This endows these information measures with a novel operational interpretation. Furthermore, our characterization can be generalized beyond quantum channels to all completely positive maps. This imposes information-theoretic limits on transmitting messages via postselected-teleportation-like mechanisms with arbitrary initial- and final-state boundary conditions, including those considered in various black-hole final-state models.
title Retrocausal capacity of a quantum channel
topic Quantum Physics
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.08965