Scientific Series

We investigate the strengths and weaknesses of the Spekkens toy model for quantum states. We axiomatize the Spekkens toy model into a set of five axioms, regarding valid states, transformations, measurements and composition of systems. We present two relaxations of the Spekkens toy model, giving rise to two variant toy theories. By relaxing the axiom regarding valid transformations a group of toy operations is obtained that is equivalent to the projective extended Clifford Group for one and two qubits. However, the physical state of affairs resulting from this relaxation is undesirable, violating the desideratum that single toy bit operations must compose under the tensor product. The second variant toy theory is obtained by relaxing the axioms regarding valid states and measurements, resulting in a toy model that exhibits the Kochen-Specker property. Like the previous toy model, the relaxation renders the toy model physically undesirable. Therefore, we claim that the Spekkens toy model is optimal; altering its axioms does not yield a better epistemic description of quantum theory. This work is a collaboration with Gilad Gour, Aidan Roy and Barry C. Sanders.

Set theory provides foundations of mathematics in the sense that all the mathematical notions like numbers, functions, relations, structures are defined in the axiomatic set theory called ZFC. Quantum set theory naturally extends ZFC to quantum logic. Hence, we can expect that quantum set theory provides mathematics based on quantum logic. In this talk, I will show a useful application of quantum set theory to quantum mechanics based on the fact that the real numbers constructed in quantum set theory exactly corresponds to the quantum observables. The standard formulation of quantum mechanics answers the question as to in what state an observable A has the value in an interval I. However, the question is not answered as to in what state two observables A and B have the same value. The notion of equality between the values of observables will play many important roles in foundations of quantum mechanics. The notion of measurement of an observable relies on the condition that the observable to be measured and the meter after the measurement should have the same value. We can define the notion of quantum disturbance through the condition whether the values of the given observable before and after the process is the same. It is shown that all the observational propositions on a quantum system corresponds to some propositions in quantum set theory and the equality relation naturally provides the proposition that two observables have the same value. It has been broadly accepted that we cannot speak of the values of quantum observables without assuming a hidden variable theory. However, quantum set theory enables us to do so without assuming hidden variables but alternatively under the consist use of quantum logic, which is more or less considered as logic of the superposition principle. [1] M. Ozawa, Transfer principle in quantum set theory, J. Symbolic Logic 72, 625-648 (2007), online preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/math.LO/0604349. [2] M. Ozawa, Quantum perfect correlations, Ann. Phys. (N.Y.) 321, 744--769 (2006), online preprint: LANL quant-ph/0501081.

I will comment on the prevailing atmosphere and attitudes that provoked the CJS theorem, aspects of the theorem itself, some features of the aftermath following the theorem and, finally, a critique of the relevance of the theorem based on my own research on position operators in Lorentz covariant quantum theory.

Observations of the Milky Way by the SPI/INTEGRAL satellite have confirmed the presence of a strong 511 KeV gamma-ray line emission from the bulge, which require an intense source of positrons in the galactic center. These observations are hard to account for by conventional astrophysical scenarios, whereas other proposals, such as light DM, face stringent constraints from the diffuse gamma-ray background. I will describe how light superconducting strings could be the source of the observed 511 KeV emission. The associated particle physics, at the ~ 1 TeV scale, is within reach of planned accelerator experiments, while the scenario has a distinguishing spatial distribution, proportional to the galactic magnetic field. I will also discuss how cosmic magnetic fields of nano-Gauss strength today could have been created at the time of baryogenesis. In addition to being astrophysically relevant, such magnetic fields, which are helical, can provide an independent probe of baryogenesis and CP violation in particle physics.

Graphity models are characterized by configuration spaces in which states correspond to graphs and Hamiltonians that depend on local properties of graphs such as degrees of vertices and numbers of shortcycles. It has been argued that such models can be useful in studying how an extended geometry might emerge from a background independent dynamical system. As statistical systems, graphity models can be studied analytically by estimating their partition functions or numerically by Monte Carlo simulations. In this talk I will present recent results obtained using both of these approaches. In particular, I will describe the transition between the high and low temperature regimes and arguethat matter degrees of freedom must play an important role in order for the graph states dominating in the low temperature regime to resemble interesting extended geometries.

It is well known that the derivation of the Bell Inequality rests on two major assumptions, usually called outcome independence and parameter independence. Parameter independence seems to have a straightforward motivation: it expresses a non-signalling requirement between space-like separated sites and is thus motivated by locality. The status of outcome independence is much les clear. Many authors have argued that this assumption too expresses a locality requirement, in the form of a \'screening off\' condition. I will argue that the assumption also admits of an entirely different interpretation, suggested by the concept of sufficiency in the general theory of statistical inference. In this view, the assumption of outcome independence can be explained as expressing the idea that the specification of the hidden variable is sufficient, i.e. it exhausts all the relevant statistical information about the measurement outcomes. In this view, the assumption has no roots in locality at all. Rather, I would claim, it stems from the assumption that there exists such an exhaustive state description in our putative hidden variable theories.

In this talk I will analyse the stochastic background of gravitational waves coming from a first order phase transition in the early universe. The signal is potentially detectable by the space interferometer LISA. I will present a detailed analytical model of the gravitational wave production by the collision of broken phase bubbles, together with analytical results for the gravitational wave power spectrum. Gravitational wave production by turbulence and magnetic fields will also be briefly discussed.

We discuss recent developments in the study of black holes and similar compact objects in string theory. The focus is on how these solutions are effected by higher-derivative terms in an effective action. The setting of this investigation is an off-shell formulation of five-dimensional supergravity, including terms of order four-derivatives whose precise form are determined by embedding this theory in M-theory. We find that certain singular solutions are fully regularized by the higher-derivative terms and that generic solutions receive calculable corrections to the entropy, or other relevant quantities such as the dual central charge. A particular solution studied corresponds to the geometry sourced by a fundamental string and may set the stage for a new and exciting example of holography.

This talk is concerned with the existence of spectral triples in quantum gravity. I will review the construction of a spectral triple over a functional space of connections. Here, the *-algebra is generated by holonomy loops and the Dirac type operator has the form of a global functional derivation operator. The spectral triple encodes the Poisson structure of General Relativity when formulated in terms of Ashtekars variables. Finally I will argue that the Hamiltonian of General Relativity may emerge from the construction via the requirement that inner automorphisms vanish on the vacuum sector.

The last years have seen tremendous progress in simulations of inspiral and coalescence of binary black holes. I will present recent results of the Caltech/Cornell collaboration simulating inspiral and collision of two black holes. Furthermore, while currently no talk on numerical relativity seems to be complete without a discussion of binary black hole coalescence, there are many more aspects of Einstein\'s equations that can be probed numerically. I will discuss some of these unexpected and intriguing features, among them black holes with five horizons and super-extremal black holes.

The focus of this talk is a particular feature of the statistical behavior of elementary particles, simple composite systems of them and the quantum probability theory to which this behavior gives rise. The standard interpretation of a generalized probability theory of the sort found in quantum mechanics is that its probabilities are probabilities of propositions belonging to particles, where a proposition belongs to a particle if its constituent dynamical property is a possible property of the particle. The feature of interest is the fact that there exist simple systems and finite combinations of propositions belonging to them for which no two-valued measures are possible. I will argue that quantum probabilities are not satisfactorily interpretable as probabilities of propositions belonging to particles, and that such an interpretation is possible only when the propositions to which probabilities are assigned form (an algebraic structure which is homomorphic to) a Boolean algebra. The idea I will develop is that the probabilities of quantum mechanics are probabilities of “effects,” probabilities of the traces of particleinteractions with objects and processes that are epistemically accessible to us. I hope to make it clear that such a view is not committed to any kind of anti-realism about the micro-world, that its mildly instrumentalist flavor is not a defect but a strength, and that it illuminates at least one otherwise paradoxical feature of quantum mechanics.