TY - JOUR
T1 - Replicating the benefits of Deutschian closed timelike curves without breaking causality
AU - Yuan, Xiao
AU - Assad, Syed M.
AU - Thompson, Jayne
AU - Haw, Jing Yan
AU - Vedral, Vlatko
AU - Ralph, Timothy C.
AU - Lam, Ping Koy
AU - Weedbrook, Christian
AU - Gu, Mile
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 University of New South Wales/Macmillan Publishers Limited.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - In general relativity, closed timelike curves can break causality with remarkable and unsettling consequences. At the classical level, they induce causal paradoxes disturbing enough to motivate conjectures that explicitly prevent their existence. At the quantum level such problems can be resolved through the Deutschian formalism, however this induces radical benefits - from cloning unknown quantum states to solving problems intractable to quantum computers. Instinctively, one expects these benefits to vanish if causality is respected. Here we show that in harnessing entanglement, we can efficiently solve NP-complete problems and clone arbitrary quantum states - even when all time-travelling systems are completely isolated from the past. Thus, the many defining benefits of Deutschian closed timelike curves can still be harnessed, even when causality is preserved. Our results unveil a subtle interplay between entanglement and general relativity, and significantly improve the potential of probing the radical effects that may exist at the interface between relativity and quantum theory.
AB - In general relativity, closed timelike curves can break causality with remarkable and unsettling consequences. At the classical level, they induce causal paradoxes disturbing enough to motivate conjectures that explicitly prevent their existence. At the quantum level such problems can be resolved through the Deutschian formalism, however this induces radical benefits - from cloning unknown quantum states to solving problems intractable to quantum computers. Instinctively, one expects these benefits to vanish if causality is respected. Here we show that in harnessing entanglement, we can efficiently solve NP-complete problems and clone arbitrary quantum states - even when all time-travelling systems are completely isolated from the past. Thus, the many defining benefits of Deutschian closed timelike curves can still be harnessed, even when causality is preserved. Our results unveil a subtle interplay between entanglement and general relativity, and significantly improve the potential of probing the radical effects that may exist at the interface between relativity and quantum theory.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85013768808&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/npjqi.2015.7
DO - 10.1038/npjqi.2015.7
M3 - Article
SN - 2056-6387
VL - 1
JO - npj Quantum Information
JF - npj Quantum Information
M1 - 15007
ER -