Causality and realizability of local operations in quantum field theory

Abstract

In 1993, Sorkin noted, in the context of quantum field theory (QFT), that identifying the operations accessible to an observer acting in some spacetime region with quantum instruments whose Kraus operators are localizable therein leads to superluminal communication. This so-called Sorkin paradox can be resolved by further constraining the set of allowed local operations in QFT. In this spirit, Jubb and Oeckl identified the minimal conditions that QFT instruments must satisfy to be compatible with Einstein's causality. Independently, Fewster and Verch proposed a framework for local QFT operations that generalizes non-relativistic quantum measurement theory; remarkably, such FV-realizable instruments were shown to be causal. In this work, we study both approaches in the quantum field theory of the free scalar field. In this regard, we prove that there exist causal channels that cannot be arbitrarily well approximated through FV schemes. Moreover, deciding whether a given instrument is implementable or far away from being implementable by composing several FV operations is an uncomputable problem. On a more optimistic note, we show that a very wide class of causal instruments is FV-realizable: namely, those whose measurement channels are random displacements of the field operators. As we show, those suffice to implement any Positive Operator Valued Measure over a set of field quadratures in a non-demolition way (i.e., without perturbing any other commuting quadratures). Similarly, they allow approximating arbitrary QFT operations, causal or not, in a heralded, probabilistic way.