Searcharxiv⌕ Search

arXiv subjects

Samuel L. Braunstein

Publications and source records attributed to Samuel L. Braunstein.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
arXiv2025

Black holes, fast scrambling and the breakdown of the equivalence principle

Under reasonable assumptions, black holes have been argued to form firewalls, burning up anything crossing their horizons. This argument finds that a firewall would appear very late in a black hole's lifetime, when Hawking radiation has caused the horizon to shrink to one-half its original area. For stellar-mass black holes, this process surpasses the universe's current age and so no such black hole would currently possess a firewall. However, black holes have recently been conjectured to scramble their interior degrees-of-freedom, with a scrambling time scale comparable to the time it takes light to travel a Schwartzschild radius' distance. We prove that local observers will already experience a firewall from the scrambling time onwards after the black hole's formation. Here `local' means that the observer couples to fewer than one-half the black hole's total interior `qubits.' Indeed, for observers to fail to be local in this manner, it would mean that they couple to more `qubits' within such black holes than exist in all the stars of the observable universe. Therefore we find that if black holes are indeed fast scramblers, then every astrophysical black hole in the universe will already have a fully developed firewall for any local physical process.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2024

Listening to Quantum Gravity?

Recent experimental progresses in controlling classical and quantum fluids have made it possible to realize acoustic analogues of gravitational black holes, where a flowing fluid provides an effective spacetime on which sound waves propagate, demonstrating Hawking-like radiation and superradiance. We propose the exciting possibility that new hydrodynamic systems might provide insights to help resolve mysteries associated with quantum gravity, including the black hole information-loss paradox and the removal of spacetime singularities.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2024

Analogue simulations of quantum gravity with fluids

The recent technological advances in controlling and manipulating fluids have enabled the experimental realization of acoustic analogues of gravitational black holes. A flowing fluid provides an effective curved spacetime on which sound waves can propagate, allowing the simulation of gravitational geometries and related phenomena. The last decade has witnessed a variety of hydrodynamic experiments testing disparate aspects of black hole physics culminating in the recent experimental evidence of Hawking radiation and Penrose superradiance. In this Perspective, we discuss the potential use of analogue hydrodynamic systems beyond classical general relativity towards the exploration of quantum gravitational effects. These include possible insights into the information-loss paradox, black hole physics with Planck-scale quantum corrections, emergent gravity scenarios and the regularization of curvature singularities. We aim at bridging the gap between the non-overlapping communities of experimentalists working with classical and quantum fluids and quantum-gravity theorists, illustrating the opportunities made possible by the latest experimental and theoretical developments in these important areas of research

gr-qc↗
arXiv2024

Life in a random universe: Sciama's argument reconsidered

Random sampling in high dimensions has successfully been applied to phenomena as diverse as nuclear resonances, neural networks and black hole evaporation. Here we revisit an elegant argument by the British physicist Dennis Sciama, which demonstrated that were our universe random, it would almost certainly have a negligible chance for life. Under plausible assumptions, we show that a random universe can masquerade as `intelligently designed,' with the fundamental constants instead appearing to be fined tuned to be achieve the highest probability for life to occur. For our universe, this mechanism may only require there to be around a dozen currently unknown fundamental constants. We speculate on broader applications for the mechanism we uncover.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2023

Exact Quantum Speed Limits

The traditional quantum speed limits are not attainable for many physical processes, as they tend to be loose and fail to determine the exact time taken by quantum systems to evolve. To address this, we derive exact quantum speed limits for the unitary dynamics of pure-state quantum system that outperform the existing quantum speed limits. Using these exact quantum speed limits, we can precisely estimate the evolution time for two- and higher-dimensional quantum systems. Additionally, for both finite- and infinite-dimensional quantum systems, we derive an improved Mandelstam-Tamm bound for pure states and show that this bound always saturates for any unitary generated by self-inverse Hamiltonians. Furthermore, we show that our speed limits establish an upper bound on the quantum computational circuit complexity. These results will have a significant impact on our understanding of quantum physics as well as rapidly developing quantum technologies, such as quantum computing, quantum control and quantum thermal machines.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2022

Higher-dimensional performance of port-based teleportation

Port-based teleportation (PBT) is a variation of regular quantum teleportation that operates without a final unitary correction. However, its behavior for higher-dimensional systems has been hard to calculate explicitly beyond dimension $d=2$. Indeed, relying on conventional Hilbert-space representations entails an exponential overhead with increasing dimension. Some general upper and lower bounds for various success measures, such as (entanglement) fidelity, are known, but some become trivial in higher dimensions. Here we construct a graph-theoretic algebra (a subset of Temperley-Lieb algebra) which allows us to explicitly compute the higher-dimensional performance of PBT for so-called "pretty-good measurements" with negligible representational overhead. This graphical algebra allows us to explicitly compute the success probability to distinguish the different outcomes and fidelity for arbitrary dimension $d$ and low number of ports $N$, obtaining in addition a simple upper bound. The results for low $N$ and arbitrary $d$ show that the fidelity asymptotically approaches ${N}/{d^2}$ for large $d$, confirming the performance of one lower bound from the literature.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2022

Surfaces away from horizons are not thermodynamic

Since the 1970's it has been known that black hole (and other) horizons are truly thermodynamic in nature. More generally, surfaces which are not horizons have also been conjectured to behave thermodynamically. Initially, for surfaces microscopically expanded from a horizon to so-called stretched horizons, and more recently, for more general ordinary surfaces in the emergent gravity program. To test these conjectures we ask whether such surfaces satisfy an analogue to the first law of thermodynamics (as do horizons). For static asymptotically-flat spacetimes we find that such a first law holds on horizons. We rigorously prove that this law remains an excellent approximation for stretched horizons, but perhaps counter-intuitively this result illustrates the insufficiency of the laws of black hole mechanics alone from implying truly thermodynamic behavior. For surfaces away from horizons in the emergent gravity program the first law fails (with the exception of fully spherically symmetric scenarios) thus undermining the key thermodynamic assumption of this program.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2021

Information recovery from evaporating rotating charged black holes

In classical gravity, nothing can escape from a black hole, not even light. In particular, this happens for stationary black holes because their horizons are null. We show, on the other hand, that the apparent horizon and the region near r = 0 of an evaporating charged, rotating black hole are both timelike. This implies that there exists a channel, via which classical or quantum information can escape to the outside, as the black hole evaporates. Since astrophysical black holes have at least some rotation, our results apply to all black holes in nature. We discuss the implications of our result.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2021

Information recovery from evaporating black holes

We show that the apparent horizon and the region near $r=0$ of an evaporating charged, rotating black hole are timelike. It then follows that for black holes in nature, which invariably have some rotation, have a channel, via which classical or quantum information can escape to the outside, while the black hole shrinks in size. We discuss implications for the information loss problem.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2021

Noether charge astronomy

Noether's theorem identifies fundamental conserved quantities, called Noether charges, from a Hamiltonian. To-date Noether charges remain largely elusive within theories of gravity: We do not know how to directly measure them, and their physical interpretation remains unsettled in general spacetimes. Here we show that the surface gravity as naturally defined for a family of observers in arbitrarily dynamical spacetimes is a directly measurable Noether charge. This Noether charge reduces to the accepted value on stationary horizons, and, when integrated over a closed surface, yields an energy with the characteristics of gravitating mass. Stokes' theorem then identifies the gravitating energy density as the time-component of a locally conserved Noether current in general spacetimes. Our conclusion, that this Noether charge is extractable from astronomical observations, holds the potential for determining the detailed distribution of the gravitating mass in galaxies, galaxy clusters and beyond.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2020

Could dark matter be a natural consequence of a dynamical universe?

We construct the gravitating mass of an isolated composite system on asymptotically-flat spacetimes within conventional general relativity and investigate when this quantity is well defined. For stationary spacetimes, this quantity is known to exactly equal the physical (ADM) mass. However, it remains an open question whether these two masses are equal in the absence of a timelike Killing vector. This is especially apropos since our universe has an `origin' and hence no such Killing vector. Further, if these masses failed to agree then composite systems could behave as if they had a `dark component,' whose gravitating mass would not equal the physical mass-energy present. The existence of such an apparent discrepancy is indeed ubiquitous in galaxies and galaxy clusters, though currently it is attributed to the presence of dark matter. We conclude that the theoretical question of the relation between these masses for dynamical spacetimes is ripe for attention.

gr-qc↗
arXiv2020

Detecting and tracking bacteria with quantum light

The field of quantum sensing aims at improving the detection and estimation of classical parameters that are encoded in physical systems by resorting to quantum sources of light and quantum detection strategies. The same approach can be used to improve the current classical measurements that are performed on biological systems. Here we consider the scenario of two bacteria (E. coli and Salmonella) growing in a Luria Bertani broth and monitored by classical spectrophotometers. Their concentration can be related to the optical transmissivity via the Beer-Lambert-Bouguer's law and their growth curves can be described by means of Gompertz functions. Starting from experimental data points, we extrapolate the growth curves of the two bacteria and we study the theoretical performance that would be achieved with a quantum setup. In particular, we discuss how the bacterial growth can, in principle, be tracked by irradiating the samples with orders of magnitude fewer photons, identifying the clear superiority of quantum light in the early stages of growth. We then show the superiority and the limits of quantum resources in two basic tasks: (i) the early detection of bacterial growth and (ii) the early discrimination between two bacteria species.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2020

Environment-assisted bosonic quantum communications

We consider a quantum relay which is used by two parties to perform several continuous-variable protocols of quantum communication, from entanglement distribution (swapping and distillation), to quantum teleportation, and quantum key distribution. The theory of these protocols is suitably extended to a non-Markovian model of decoherence characterized by correlated Gaussian noise in the bosonic environment. In the worst case scenario where bipartite entanglement is completely lost at the relay, we show that the various protocols can be reactivated by the assistance of classical (separable) correlations in the environment. In fact, above a critical amount, these correlations are able to guarantee the distribution of a weaker form of entanglement (quadripartite), which can be localized by the relay into a stronger form (bipartite) that is exploitable by the parties. Our findings are confirmed by a proof-of-principle experiment where we show, for the first time, that memory effects in the environment can drastically enhance the performance of a quantum relay, well beyond the single-repeater bound for quantum and private communications.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2019

Tight bounds for private communication over bosonic Gaussian channels based on teleportation simulation with optimal finite resources

Upper bounds for private communication over quantum channels can be derived by adopting channel simulation, protocol stretching, and relative entropy of entanglement. All these ingredients have led to single-letter upper bounds to the secret key capacity which can be directly computed over suitable resource states. For bosonic Gaussian channels, the tightest upper bounds have been derived by employing teleportation simulation over asymptotic resource states, namely the asymptotic Choi matrices of these channels. In this work, we adopt a different approach. We show that teleporting over an analytical class of finite-energy resource states allows us to closely approximate the ultimate bounds for increasing energy, so as to provide increasingly tight upper bounds to the secret-key capacity of one-mode phase-insensitive Gaussian channels. We then show that an optimization over the same class of resource states can be used to bound the maximum secret key rates that are achievable in a finite number of channel uses.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Symmetric and asymmetric discrimination of bosonic loss: Toy applications to biological samples and photo-degradable materials

We consider quantum discrimination of bosonic loss based on both symmetric and asymmetric hypothesis testing. In both approaches, an entangled resource is able to outperform any classical strategy based on coherent-state transmitters in the regime of low photon numbers. In the symmetric case, we then consider the low energy detection of bacterial growth in culture media. Assuming an exponential growth law for the bacterial concentration and the Beer-Lambert law for the optical transmissivity of the sample, we find that the use of entanglement allows one to achieve a much faster detection of growth with respect to the use of coherent states. This performance is also studied by assuming an exponential photo-degradable model, where the concentration is reduced by increasing the number of photons irradiated over the sample. This investigation is then extended to the readout of classical information from suitably-designed photo-degradable optical memories.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Teleportation simulation of bosonic Gaussian channels: Strong and uniform convergence

We consider the Braunstein-Kimble protocol for continuous variable teleportation and its application for the simulation of bosonic channels. We discuss the convergence properties of this protocol under various topologies (strong, uniform, and bounded-uniform) clarifying some typical misinterpretations in the literature. We then show that the teleportation simulation of an arbitrary single-mode Gaussian channel is uniformly convergent to the channel if and only if its noise matrix has full rank. The various forms of convergence are then discussed within adaptive protocols, where the simulation error must be propagated to the output of the protocol by means of a "peeling" argument, following techniques from PLOB [arXiv:1510.08863]. Finally, as an application of the peeling argument and the various topologies of convergence, we provide complete rigorous proofs for recently-claimed strong converse bounds for private communication over Gaussian channels.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Finite-resource teleportation stretching for continuous-variable systems

We show how adaptive protocols of quantum and private communication through bosonic Gaussian channels can be simplified into much easier block versions that involve resource states with finite energy. This is achieved by combining the adaptive-to-block reduction technique devised earlier [S. Pirandola et al., Nat. Commun. 8, 15043 (2017)], based on teleportation stretching and relative entropy of entanglement, with an alternative simulation of Gaussian channels recently introduced by Liuzzo-Scorpo et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 120503 (2017)]. In this way, we derive weak converse upper bounds for the secret-key capacity of phase-insensitive Gaussian channels, which approximate the optimal limit for infinite energy. Our results apply to both point-to-point and repeater-assisted private communications.

quant-ph↗