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arxiv 2206.12887 v2 pith:BZJISEWT submitted 2022-06-26 quant-ph gr-qcmath.STstat.TH

Impossibility of superluminal signalling in Minkowski space-time does not rule out causal loops

classification quant-ph gr-qcmath.STstat.TH
keywords signallingsuperluminalcausalloopsspace-timecausationminkowskipossible
verification ladder T0 review T1 audit T2 compute T3 formal T4 reserved
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Causality is fundamental to science, but it appears in several different forms. One is relativistic causality, which is tied to a space-time structure and forbids signalling outside the future. A second is an operational notion of causation that considers the flow of information between physical systems and interventions on them. In [Vilasini and Colbeck, Phys. Rev. A. 106, 032204 (2022)], we propose a framework for characterising when a causal model can coexist with relativistic principles such as no superluminal signalling, while allowing for cyclic and non-classical causal influences and the possibility of causation without signalling. In a theory without superluminal causation, both superluminal signalling and causal loops are not possible in Minkowski space-time. Here we demonstrate that if we only forbid superluminal signalling, superluminal causation remains possible and show the mathematical possibility of causal loops that can be embedded in a Minkowski space-time without leading to superluminal signalling. The existence of such loops in the given space-time could in principle be operationally verified using interventions. This establishes that the physical principle of no superluminal signalling is not by itself sufficient to rule out causal loops between Minkowski space-time events. Interestingly, the conditions required to rule out causal loops in a space-time depend on the dimension. Whether such loops are possible in three spatial dimensions remains an important open question.

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  1. Impossibility of superluminal signalling rules out causal loops in conical spacetimes

    gr-qc 2026-06 unverdicted novelty 8.0

    In conical spacetimes with d>1, NSS prohibits operationally detectable causal loops across classical, quantum and post-quantum theories, unlike the (1+1) case.