Talk today: Laura Burri 4pm, Irchel Y36K08, Tensor product factorizations and locality

[Lidia del Rio]

Dear all,

Laura Burri's bachelor thesis presentation will take place today at 
4:00pm in the UZH Irchel campus, room Y36K08

. It will be a 25min talk 
followed by questions. Title and abstract below.


    Hilbert space factorisation and locality


In quantum mechanics, the tensor product rule allows one to describe 
independent systems jointly. However, if one is given a global system, 
there is a priori no reason for considering some factorization of the 
system’s state space as “the only physical one”. Thus, if multiple 
agents observe the same system, their implicit assumptions on how the 
state space factors do not necessarily coincide. Is it possible to 
derive from the agents’ perspectives how their implicitly assumed 
factorizations are related?
The problem of answering this question is what we call The Factorization 
Problem as it pays attention to the various possible factorizations of 
the same Hilbert space. The aim of solving the factorization problem is 
to derive from agents’ abilities how their objects of observation are 
related, rather than assume from the outset knowledge about this relation.
In this work I motivate and define the factorization problem. 
Furthermore, I introduce a classification of how two agents’ assumptions 
about the factorization of some system’s state space can be related. For 
some of these classes, conditions have been found which are fundamental 
for solving the factorization problem. Yet, no generic solution of the 
factorization problem exists.


Best,

Lídia