Higher-order interference and single-system postulates characterizing quantum theory
Date
2014-12-10
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Institute of Physics
Abstract
We present a new characterization of quantum theory in terms of simple physical
principles that is different from previous ones in two important respects: first, it
only refers to properties of single systems without any assumptions on the
composition of many systems; and second, it is closer to experiment by having
absence of higher-order interference as a postulate, which is currently the subject
of experimental investigation. We give three postulates—no higher-order
interference, classical decomposability of states, and strong symmetry—and
prove that the only non-classical operational probabilistic theories satisfying
them are real, complex, and quaternionic quantum theory, together with threelevel
octonionic quantum theory and ball state spaces of arbitrary dimension.
Then we show that adding observability of energy as a fourth postulate yields
complex quantum theory as the unique solution, relating the emergence of the
complex numbers to the possibility of Hamiltonian dynamics. We also show that
there may be interesting non-quantum theories satisfying only the first two of our
postulates, which would allow for higher-order interference in experiments
while still respecting the contextuality analogue of the local orthogonality
principle.
Description
CITATION: Barnum, H., Muller, M. P. & Ududec, C. 2014. Higher-order interference and single-system postulates characterizing quantum theory. New Journal of Physics, 16:123029, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/16/12/123029.
The original publication is available at http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1367-2630
The original publication is available at http://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1367-2630
Keywords
Quantum theory
Citation
Barnum, H., Muller, M. P. & Ududec, C. 2014. Higher-order interference and single-system postulates characterizing quantum theory. New Journal of Physics, 16:123029, doi:10.1088/1367-2630/16/12/123029.