Lluis Masanes
(1985-?)
Lluis Masanes has a joint faculty position between the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the Department of Computer Science at University College London.
With Antonio Acin and
Nicolas Gisin, Masanes wrote in 2006...
There are two experimental facts that, when considered
together, significantly restrict any possible physical theory
that aims to account for them. The first one is the constancy
of the speed of light in any reference frame. This implies that
no signal carrying information can propagate faster than
light. More generally, we refer to the impossibility of sending
information arbitrarily fast as the no-signaling principle.
The second fact is the existence of correlations between
spacelike separated events that violate Bell inequalities 1,2 .
This means that such correlations cannot be explained by
strategies arranged in the past. Models accounting for such
correlations can be constructed by assuming some signaling
between the correlated events. But this seems to contradict
the first experimental fact. This is the reason why such cor-
relations are called nonlocal.
"General Properties of Nonsignaling Theories "Physical Review, A 73, 012112 (2006)
With
Markus P. Müller, Masanes developed a new derivation of quantum theory in 2011...
Quantum theory (QT) is usually formulated in terms of abstract
mathematical postulates involving Hilbert spaces, state vectors and unitary
operators. In this paper, we show that the full formalism of QT can instead
be derived from five simple physical requirements, based on elementary
assumptions regarding preparations, transformations and measurements.
"A derivation of quantum theory from physical requirements" New Journal of Physics, 13, 063001 (2011)
Masanes and Müller described the five requirements...
1. In systems that carry one bit of information, each state is characterized by a finite set of
outcome probabilities.
2. The state of a composite system is characterized by the statistics of measurements on the
individual components.
3. All systems that effectively carry the same amount of information have equivalent state
spaces.
4. Any pure state of a system can be reversibly transformed into any other.
5. In systems that carry one bit of information, all mathematically well-defined measurements
are allowed by the theory.
ibid, pp.2-3
Two years later, Masanes and Müller expanded their emphasis on a single bit of information, claiming it as a new postulate of quantum theory...
Does information play a significant role in the foundations of
physics? Information is the abstraction that allows us to refer to
the states of systems when we choose to ignore the systems
themselves. This is only possible in very particular frameworks,
like in classical or quantum theory, or more generally, whenever
there exists an information unit such that the state of any system
can be reversibly encoded in a sufficient number of such units. In
this work, we show how the abstract formalism of quantum
theory can be deduced solely from the existence of an information
unit with suitable properties, together with two further natural
assumptions: the continuity and reversibility of dynamics.
"Existence of an information unit as a postulate of quantum theory" Publications of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 41, p.16373 (2013)
This is of course our "
fundamental question in information philosophy, how does new
information (or
knowledge) enter the universe, since it began in a state of thermal equilibrium (maximum entropy and minimal information) some 13.7 million years ago?
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