Understanding Barandes' microscopic theory of causality

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Discussion Overview

This thread explores Barandes' microscopic theory of causality as presented in his pre-print "New Prospects for a Causally Local Formulation of Quantum Theory." The discussion focuses on the implications of Barandes' claims regarding causal locality in quantum mechanics, particularly in relation to Bell's theorem, and seeks to understand the interpretation of entanglement within this framework.

Discussion Character

  • Debate/contested
  • Exploratory
  • Technical explanation
  • Conceptual clarification

Main Points Raised

  • Some participants express skepticism about Barandes' assertion that his theory deflates Bell's theorem, questioning how he can claim a causally local hidden-variables formulation of quantum theory.
  • Barandes distinguishes between causal locality and Bell's local causality, which raises concerns about whether he is merely restating the no-signaling theorem.
  • There is a suggestion that Barandes' interpretation could lead to a fundamentally different understanding of the universe compared to general relativity.
  • One participant notes that Barandes does not translate "entanglement" into his new framework, implying that it remains an unresolved aspect of his theory.
  • Another participant proposes that Barandes' hidden variables differ from those in Bell's theorem, suggesting a violation of the assumption of "divisibility" into an objective beable.
  • Concerns are raised about the difficulty of explaining causal locality through a Bayesian network analogy as attempted by Barandes.
  • Some participants emphasize the need for an open-minded approach to understanding Barandes' principles rather than dismissing them outright.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants generally do not reach consensus, with multiple competing views regarding the implications of Barandes' theory and its relationship to established concepts in quantum mechanics and relativity. The discussion remains unresolved on several key points, particularly concerning the interpretation of entanglement and the validity of Barandes' claims about causal locality.

Contextual Notes

Participants note limitations in understanding Barandes' framework, particularly regarding the translation of established quantum concepts into his proposed language. There are unresolved questions about the implications of his theory for existing interpretations of quantum mechanics and the foundational assumptions underlying Bell's theorem.

  • #331
pines-demon said:
Can you provide a simple example of what would that look like?
Some links that might be relevant.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16935
In section VIII the formalism is applied to a basic EPR scenario.

https://shared.jacobbarandes.com/documents/double-slit-interference-unistochastic-lecture-notes
Lecture notes on the double-slit experiment

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.18105
The most recent paper applying the formalism to the CHSH game.
 
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  • #332
It would be very instructive for everyone if Barandés took a paper by Zeilinger (a world-renowned authority on nonlocality) and translated it completely into his own terms.
 
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  • #333
javisot said:
It would be very instructive for everyone if Barandés took a paper by Zeilinger (a world-renowned authority on nonlocality) and translated it completely into his own terms.
which paper?
 
  • #334
Morbert said:
Some links that might be relevant.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.16935
In section VIII the formalism is applied to a basic EPR scenario.

https://shared.jacobbarandes.com/documents/double-slit-interference-unistochastic-lecture-notes
Lecture notes on the double-slit experiment

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.18105
The most recent paper applying the formalism to the CHSH game.
I mean something more human level. Imagine that one tries to reproduce an entanglement experiment à la Mermin, you drop some assumption and you get an interpretation. Bohmians remove the idea that particles cannot communicate, superdeterminists remove the idea that detectors are not conspiring with the particles/experimenters, but what would be a good analogy for Barandes?
 
  • #336
javisot said:
translated into Barandés
Do you have a reason to put an accent in Barandes -> Barandés? It is not the first time I seen it here.
 
  • #337
pines-demon said:
Do you have a reason to put an accent in Barandes -> Barandés? It is not the first time I seen it here.
It must be my translator; I misspelled it once and now it always translate it that way by default. I don't know how to fix it...
 
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  • #338
pines-demon said:
I mean something more human level. Imagine that one tries to reproduce an entanglement experiment à la Mermin, you drop some assumption and you get an interpretation. Bohmians remove the idea that particles cannot communicate, superdeterminists remove the idea that detectors are not conspiring with the particles/experimenters, but what would be a good analogy for Barandes?
I would say... unlike bell HV, which correlates STATES via objective beables of which we are just ignorant; so we marginalize over them. Barandes constrains the stochastic behaviour (ie this is what replaces dynamical law in his view) of two entangled systems. Stochastic-quantum dictionary says this holds, but WHY this is, in some intuitive way, does not follow from correspondence. He just offers two views, and we can choose in which view, the open problems seems easier to solve. Trying to understand dynamical law and causation.

So I think any answer to your question, must add something that isn't in Barandes papers.

For me the real question here, is where is the physical support, ie what enforces, physical law? The normal system dynamics paradigm of hamiltionian flow certainly does NOT answer this either! Physical law is just assume to be a mathematical constraint that we think nature follows. It certainly raises questions on the nature of causality, even befor Barander paper.

In barandes view, instead of a hamiltonian flow in some statespace, we seen to have a collection of stochastic subsystems where the only "law" is constraints on the transitions. Here the question becomes, how can you enforce such transition probabilities, and have them correlated like in the entangled systems - without a bell type hidden variable? Barandes does not explain WHY. His correspondence just shows - this is true if QM is true.

It is a matter of ambigous interpretation and extrapolation to find the explicit analogy you seek. But what seems most natural to me at least is to think that the correlated stochastic behaviour is mediated with a common evolved history, that is preserved (ie entanglement not broken) as long as the two subsystems are not disturbed by the environment. This does not involve a bell type HV. And stochastic behaviour is not a "state", it is only revelaed when you interact with something. That is exactly what we have in these experiments.

To make this analogy even deeper, one unavoidably enters the kind of speculations we arent supposed to do on here.

/Fredrik
 
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  • #339
javisot said:
In this case, it's not from Zeilinger, but I would like to see the following translated into Barandés' terms: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2076

I would like to see the translation of, for example, the following works by Zeilinger: https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.07756 , https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0201134
The latter Zeilinger paper maps nicely onto section VIII of Barandes's new prospects paper. We have 7 subsystems: particles 1,2,3,4 (which we will relabel P, Q, R, S) and Alice, Bob, and Charles (A, B, and C respectively). The initial state, before any preparation into Bell states, is$$\rho_\mathrm{All}(0) = \ket{p_0,q_0,r_0,s_0,a_0,b_0,c_0}\bra{p_0,q_0,r_0,s_0,a_0,b_0,c_0}$$This corresponds to Barandes's equation 66. Preparing subsystems PQ and RS each in the usual Bell state ##\psi^-## at time ##t'## gets us to$$\begin{eqnarray*}
\rho_\mathrm{All}(t') &=& U_\mathrm{All}(t')\rho_\mathrm{All}U^\dagger_\mathrm{All}(t')\\
&=& \ket{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0, c_0}\bra{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0, c_0}
\end{eqnarray*}$$This corresponds to Barandes's equation 67, 68. Next, let's get the reduced density matrix for Alice, Bob, and their particles.$$\begin{align*}
\rho_{PSAB}(t) &=
\operatorname{tr}_{QRC}\Bigl(
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes U_{QRC}(t\leftarrow t')) \\
&\qquad \rho_{\mathrm{All}}(t')\,
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes U_{QRC}(t\leftarrow t'))^\dagger
\Bigr) \\
&=\operatorname{tr}_{QR}\Bigl(
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes I_{QR}) \\
&\qquad \ket{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0}\bra{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0}
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes I_{QR})^\dagger
\Bigr)
\end{align*}$$This corresponds to Barandes's equation 70. Notice that all dependencies on ##c_0## have disappeared. Following Barandes's equations 71, 72:$$\begin{align*}
p((a_t,b_t), t | (p_0, q_0, r_0, s_0, a_0, b_0, c_0), 0) &=
\sum_{p_t,q_t,r_t,s_t,c_t}p((p_t,q_t,r_t,s_t,a_t,b_t), t | (p_0, q_0, r_0, s_0, a_0, b_0, c_0), 0) \\
&=p(a_t,b_t, t | (p_0, q_0, r_0, s_0, a_0, b_0), 0)
\end{align*}$$where$$\begin{align*}
p(a_t,b_t, t | (p_0, q_0, r_0, s_0, a_0, b_0), 0) &=\bra{a_t,b_t}\operatorname{tr}_{QR}\Bigl(
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes I_{QR})\\
&\qquad\ket{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0}\bra{\psi^-_{PQ},\psi^-_{RS}, a_0, b_0}
(U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes I_{QR})^\dagger
\Bigr)\ket{a_t,b_t}\end{align*}$$The probabilities for Alice's and Bob's final states are not conditioned on Charles's initial state.

In section VIII, in the standard EPR scenario, Barandes shows Bob has no influence on Alice, as the computed probabilities for Alice turn out to not be conditioned on Bob. (He elaborates on the relation between causal relations and probabilities in section VI). Analogously, in the entanglement swapping scenario, we Charles has no causal influence on Alice or Bob, as their probabilities are not conditioned on Charles. This hinges on the factorizeability of ##U_\mathrm{All}(t\leftarrow t') = U_{PSAB}(t\leftarrow t')\otimes U_{QRC}(t\leftarrow t') ##
 
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