Axioms for quantum mechanics: relativistic causality, retrocausality, and the existence of a classical limit
ORAL
Abstract
Y. Aharonov and A. Shimony both conjectured that two axioms -- relativistic causality (``no superluminal signalling'') and nonlocality -- so nearly contradict each other that only quantum mechanics reconciles them. Can we indeed derive quantum mechanics, at least in part, from these two axioms? No: ``PR-box'' correlations show that quantum correlations are not the most nonlocal correlations consistent with relativistic causality. Here we replace ``nonlocality'' with ``retrocausality'' and supplement the axioms of relativistic causality and retrocausality with a natural and minimal third axiom: the existence of a classical limit, in which macroscopic observables commute. That is, just as quantum mechanics has a classical limit, so must any generalization of quantum mechanics. In this limit, PR-box correlations \textit{violate }relativistic causality. Generalized to all stronger-than-quantum bipartite correlations, this result is a derivation of Tsirelson's bound (a theorem of quantum mechanics) from the three axioms of relativistic causality, retrocausality and the existence of a classical limit. Although the derivation does not assume quantum mechanics, it points to the Hilbert space structure that underlies quantum correlations.
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Authors
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Daniel Rohrlich
Physics Department, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba 8410501