Locally Tomographic Shadows (Extended Abstract)

Abstract

Given a monoidal probabilistic theory -- a symmetric monoidal category $\mathcal{C}$ of systems and processes, together with a functor $\mathbf{V}$ assigning concrete probabilistic models to objects of $\mathcal{C}$ -- we construct a locally tomographic probabilistic theory LT$(\mathcal{C},\mathbf{V})$ -- the locally tomographic shadow of $(\mathcal{C},\mathbf{V})$ -- describing phenomena observable by local agents controlling systems in $\mathcal{C}$, and able to pool information about joint measurements made on those systems. Some globally distinct states become locally indistinguishable in LT$(\mathcal{C},\mathbf{V})$, and we restrict the set of processes to those that respect this indistinguishability. This construction is investigated in some detail for real quantum theory.

In Proceedings QPL 2023, arXiv:2308.15489