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Register a new userGiving Operational Meaning to the Superposition of Causal Orders
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Authors
Nicola Pinzani
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In this work, we give rigorous operational meaning to superposition of causal orders. This fits within a recent effort to understand how the standard operational perspective on quantum theory could be extended to include indefinite causality. The mainstream view, that of process matrices, takes a top-down approach to the problem, considering all causal correlations that are compatible with local quantum experiments. Conversely, we pursue a bottom-up approach, investigating how the concept of indefiniteness emerges from specific characteristics of generic operational theories. Specifically, we pin down the operational phenomenology of the notion of non-classical (e.g. coherent) control, which we then use to formalise a theory-independent notion of control (e.g. superposition) of causal orders. To validate our framework, we show how salient examples from the literature can be captured in our framework.
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