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Hauptverfasser: Dourdent, Hippolyte, Simonov, Kyrylo, Leitherer, Andreas, Boghiu, Emanuel-Cristian, Kunjwal, Ravi, Halder, Saronath, Augusiak, Remigiusz, Acín, Antonio
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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Online-Zugang:https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23599
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author Dourdent, Hippolyte
Simonov, Kyrylo
Leitherer, Andreas
Boghiu, Emanuel-Cristian
Kunjwal, Ravi
Halder, Saronath
Augusiak, Remigiusz
Acín, Antonio
author_facet Dourdent, Hippolyte
Simonov, Kyrylo
Leitherer, Andreas
Boghiu, Emanuel-Cristian
Kunjwal, Ravi
Halder, Saronath
Augusiak, Remigiusz
Acín, Antonio
contents Closed timelike curves (CTCs) challenge our conception of causality by allowing information to loop back into its own past. Any consistent description of such scenarios must avoid time-travel paradoxes while respecting the no-new-physics principle, which requires that the set of operations available within any local spacetime region remain unchanged, irrespective of whether CTCs exist elsewhere. Within an information-theoretic framework, this leads to process functions: deterministic classical communication structures that remain logically consistent under arbitrary local operations, yet can exhibit correlations incompatible with any definite causal order - a phenomenon known as non-causality. In this work, we provide the first complete recursive characterization of process functions and of (non-)causal process functions. We use it to establish a correspondence between process functions and unambiguous complete product bases, i.e., product bases in which every local state belongs to a unique local basis. This equivalence implies that non-causality of process functions is exactly mirrored by quantum nonlocality without entanglement (QNLWE) - the impossibility of perfectly distinguishing separable states using local operations and causal classical communication - for such bases. Our results generalize previous special cases to arbitrary local dimensions and any number of parties, enable systematic constructions of non-causal process functions and unambiguous QNLWE bases, and reveal an unexpected connection between certain non-signaling inequalities and causal inequalities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_23599
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Paradox-free classical non-causality and unambiguous non-locality without entanglement are equivalent
Dourdent, Hippolyte
Simonov, Kyrylo
Leitherer, Andreas
Boghiu, Emanuel-Cristian
Kunjwal, Ravi
Halder, Saronath
Augusiak, Remigiusz
Acín, Antonio
Quantum Physics
Closed timelike curves (CTCs) challenge our conception of causality by allowing information to loop back into its own past. Any consistent description of such scenarios must avoid time-travel paradoxes while respecting the no-new-physics principle, which requires that the set of operations available within any local spacetime region remain unchanged, irrespective of whether CTCs exist elsewhere. Within an information-theoretic framework, this leads to process functions: deterministic classical communication structures that remain logically consistent under arbitrary local operations, yet can exhibit correlations incompatible with any definite causal order - a phenomenon known as non-causality. In this work, we provide the first complete recursive characterization of process functions and of (non-)causal process functions. We use it to establish a correspondence between process functions and unambiguous complete product bases, i.e., product bases in which every local state belongs to a unique local basis. This equivalence implies that non-causality of process functions is exactly mirrored by quantum nonlocality without entanglement (QNLWE) - the impossibility of perfectly distinguishing separable states using local operations and causal classical communication - for such bases. Our results generalize previous special cases to arbitrary local dimensions and any number of parties, enable systematic constructions of non-causal process functions and unambiguous QNLWE bases, and reveal an unexpected connection between certain non-signaling inequalities and causal inequalities.
title Paradox-free classical non-causality and unambiguous non-locality without entanglement are equivalent
topic Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.23599