Bounding single-copy information causality violations
Abstract
Information causality is a physical principle that constrains bipartite post-quantum nonlocal correlations from information-theoretic assumptions. A direct characterization of the correlations satisfying it, however, remains difficult because the defining entropic condition must hold for all admissible protocols in the corresponding task. Here, we formulate the single-copy information causality problem as an optimization over all protocol parameters and simplify it by proving a deterministic reduction. We then show that generic adaptive multi-copy protocols can be represented as single-copy protocols applied to an effective behavior obtained by local wirings. As a consequence, for families of correlations closed under wirings, excluding single-copy violations suffices to exclude all finite-copy adaptive-protocol violations. We formulate the resulting membership and set-inclusion problems as optimization problems and discuss possible semidefinite programming relaxations. As an application, we study expansions of the information causality functional around zero-capacity channels, generalizing a method recently employed by Gachechiladze and Miklin to derive the Tsirelson--Landau--Masanes boundary from information causality. For expansions centered on channels whose output distribution has full support, imposing the second-order constraints for all single-copy protocols characterizes exactly the set of macroscopic locality in the CHSH scenario. Expanding instead around appropriate constant-output channels with perturbations that change the channel support, we show that every single-copy IC violation can be witnessed already at first order with a channel of arbitrarily small capacity.
Related
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- Almost-Quantum Correlations Violate Information Causality
BibTeX
@misc{pompili2026bounding,
title = {{Bounding single-copy information causality violations}},
author = {Marco Pompili and Costantino Budroni},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.32783},
eprint = {2610.32783},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32783},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Bounding single-copy information causality violations
AU - Marco Pompili
AU - Costantino Budroni
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/23
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.32783
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.32783
AB - Information causality is a physical principle that constrains bipartite post-quantum nonlocal correlations from information-theoretic assumptions. A direct characterization of the correlations satisfying it, however, remains difficult because the defining entropic condition must hold for all admissible protocols in the corresponding task. Here, we formulate the single-copy information causality problem as an optimization over all protocol parameters and simplify it by proving a deterministic reduction. We then show that generic adaptive multi-copy protocols can be represented as single-copy protocols applied to an effective behavior obtained by local wirings. As a consequence, for families of correlations closed under wirings, excluding single-copy violations suffices to exclude all finite-copy adaptive-protocol violations. We formulate the resulting membership and set-inclusion problems as optimization problems and discuss possible semidefinite programming relaxations. As an application, we study expansions of the information causality functional around zero-capacity channels, generalizing a method recently employed by Gachechiladze and Miklin to derive the Tsirelson--Landau--Masanes boundary from information causality. For expansions centered on channels whose output distribution has full support, imposing the second-order constraints for all single-copy protocols characterizes exactly the set of macroscopic locality in the CHSH scenario. Expanding instead around appropriate constant-output channels with perturbations that change the channel support, we show that every single-copy IC violation can be witnessed already at first order with a channel of arbitrarily small capacity.
ER -