Apr 17 – 21, 2023
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics
America/Toronto timezone

Quantum causal inference in the presence of hidden common causes: An entropic approach

Apr 18, 2023, 2:30 PM
30m
PI/4-405 - Bob Room (Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics)

PI/4-405 - Bob Room

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

60

Speaker

Mohammad Ali Javidian (Appalachian State University)

Description

Quantum causality is an emerging field of study which has the potential to greatly advance our understanding of quantum systems. In this paper, we put forth a theoretical framework for merging quantum information science and causal inference by exploiting entropic principles. For this purpose, we leverage the tradeoff between the entropy of hidden cause and the conditional mutual information of observed variables to develop a scalable algorithmic approach for inferring causality in the presence of latent confounders (common causes) in quantum systems. As an application, we consider a system of three entangled qubits and transmit the second and third qubits over separate noisy quantum channels. In this model, we validate that the first qubit is a latent confounder and the common cause of the second and third qubits. In contrast, when two entangled qubits are prepared and one of them is sent over a noisy channel, there is no common confounder. We also demonstrate that the proposed approach outperforms the results of classical causal inference for the Tubingen database when the variables are classical by exploiting quantum dependence between variables through density matrices rather than joint probability distributions.

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