V. Vilasini

Causal modelling frameworks link observable correlations to causal explanations, which is a crucial aspect of science. These models represent causal relationships through directed graphs, with vertices and edges denoting systems and transformations within a theory. Most studies focus on acyclic causal graphs, where well-defined probability rules and powerful graph-theoretic properties like the d-separation theorem apply. However, understanding complex feedback processes and exotic fundamental scenarios with causal loops requires cyclic causal models, where such results do not generally hold. While progress has been made in classical cyclic causal models, challenges remain in uniquely fixing probability distributions and identifying graph-separation properties applicable in general cyclic models. In cyclic quantum scenarios, existing frameworks have focussed on a subset of possible cyclic causal scenarios, with graph-separation properties yet unexplored. This work proposes a framework applicable to all consistent quantum and classical cyclic causal models on finite-dimensional systems. We address these challenges by introducing a robust probability rule and a novel graph-separation property, p-separation, which we prove to be sound and complete for all such models. Our approach maps cyclic causal models to acyclic ones with post-selection, leveraging the post-selected quantum teleportation protocol. We characterize these protocols and their success probabilities along the way. We also establish connections between this formalism and other classical and quantum frameworks to inform a more unified perspective on causality. This provides a foundation for more general cyclic causal discovery algorithms and to systematically extend open problems and techniques from acyclic informational networks (e.g., certification of non-classicality) to cyclic causal structures and networks.

The design of quantum protocols for secure key generation poses many challenges: On the one hand, they need to be practical concerning experimental realisations. On the other hand, their theoretical description must be simple enough to allow for a security proof against all possible attacks. Often, these two requirements are in conflict with each other, and the differential phase shift (DPS) QKD protocol exemplifies these difficulties: It is designed to be implementable with current optical telecommunication technology, which, for this protocol, comes at the cost that many standard security proof techniques do not apply to it. After about 20 years since its invention, this work presents the first full security proof of DPS QKD against general attacks, including finite-size effects. The proof combines techniques from quantum information theory, quantum optics, and relativity. We first give a security proof of a QKD protocol whose security stems from relativistic constraints. We then show that security of DPS QKD can be reduced to security of the relativistic protocol. In addition, we show that coherent attacks on the DPS protocol are, in fact, stronger than collective attacks.

The process matrix framework models quantum protocols without assuming a definite acyclic causal order between the operations of parties in the protocol. This leads to so-called indefinite causal order processes which have been shown to provide advantages for quantum information processing. However, there have been longstanding open questions regarding the subset of practically realisable process matrices, as well as challenges in formulating their composition. We make progress on addressing such questions by connecting an important subset of process matrices, namely quantum circuits with quantum control of causal order (QC-QC) with so-called causal boxes which describe practical quantum information protocols in spacetime. Causal boxes are fully closed under composition and incorporate physical principles such as relativistic causality in spacetime. We first identify a notion of operational equivalence between QC-QCs and causal boxes by connecting state spaces and operations in the two formalisms. We then explicitly construct for each QC-QC an operationally equivalent causal box that satisfies certain special mathematical properties that allows the causal box to be interpreted as a process, this corresponds to a subset of causal boxes previously known as process boxes. This allows us to define composition of QC-QCs in terms of composition of causal boxes which is well-defined. We conjecture with a proof sketch that the spatiotemporal labels involved in their description can be simplified to a certain totally ordered form. Based on this, we establish through a constructive proof that every process box can be mapped to an operationally equivalent QCQC. This indicates that the subset of indefinite causal order processes realisable in a background spacetime correspond to controlled superpositions of acyclic orders, which in particular rules out processes violating so-called causal inequalities. Our results shed light on the practicality and composability questions for indefinite causal structures while introducing new physically-motivated tools for studying their applications for quantum information processing in spacetime.

The design of quantum protocols for secure key generation poses many challenges: On the one hand, they need to be practical concerning experimental realisations. On the other hand, their theoretical description must be simple enough to allow for a security proof against all possible attacks. Often, these two requirements are in conflict with each other, and the differential phase shift (DPS) QKD protocol exemplifies these difficulties: It is designed to be implementable with current optical telecommunication technology, which, for this protocol, comes at the cost that many standard security proof techniques do not apply to it. After about 20 years since its invention, this work presents the first full security proof of DPS QKD against general attacks, including finite-size effects. The proof combines techniques from quantum information theory, quantum optics, and relativity. We first give a security proof of a QKD protocol whose security stems from relativistic constraints. We then show that security of DPS QKD can be reduced to security of the relativistic protocol. In addition, we show that coherent attacks on the DPS protocol are, in fact, stronger than collective attacks.