Quantum computational speedup and retrocausality
Year: 2025
Type: preprint
Abstract: Involving only the measurements of commuting observables - the problem-setting and the corresponding solution - quantum algorithms must be subject to classical logic. This allows us to flank their customary quantum description with a classical logic description. In the classical logic description of the quantum algorithm, it is as if the problem-solver knew in advance, before beginning her problem-solving action, one (any one) of the possible halves of the information that specifies the solution of the problem she will produce and measure in the future and could use this knowledge to produce the solution with fewer computation steps. This is naturally a causal loop whose retrocausal character turns out to be implicit in the very notion of quantum state superposition, both an essential ingredient of the quantum computational speedup and one of the pillars of quantum mechanics. More in general, these causal loops turn out to be implicit in quantum correlations and, under the quantum cosmological assumption, also in the correlations of macroscopic reality.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Castagnoli, Giuseppe
Language: English
Subfield: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics
Field: Physics and Astronomy
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6929493775
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