Dear all,

Tomorrow our group meeting yields to a special seminar by Gilles Brassard. Note the unusual room. 

Cheers,

Lídia

Gilles Brassard, Local realistic and non-signalling theories: Introduction

Tuesday, 7th of May 2019, 15:30, HPV G4, ETH Hönggerberg

This is the first of a series of lectures in which I shall demonstrate the equivalence between local realistic and reversible-dynamics non-signalling theories of physics (which includes unitary quantum theory), Bell’s theorem notwithstanding. 

This first lecture will be given mostly as a public lecture set on a philosophical level, with no need for mathematical sophistication nor prior knowledge of quantum theory. In particular, we shall see that it is possible for a local-realistic fantasy world to violate Bell’s inequality even more so than quantum theory. This suffices to prove that no experimental violations of Bell’s inequality can be considered as proof, or even evidence, that our world cannot be both local and realistic: loophole-free experiments cannot exist by definition since the more experiments agree with the predictions of quantum theory, the more they give evidence that our world can be local and realistic!

The subsequent lectures will delve in the technical definitions of local realism and of non-signalling, and in the mathematical proof of equivalence between those two notions, provided the non-signalling theory exhibits reversible dynamics. Attending the first lecture is highly recommended to those who wish to continue, but the first lecture can be enjoyed on its own.

The first lecture will be based on https://www.mdpi.com/1099-4300/21/1/87 .
The following lectures will be based on https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.01380 .
This is joint work with Paul Raymond-Robichaud.