Applied Metaphysics: Nonlocality as a Resource

Professor Wim Van Dam

UCSB Computer Science / Physics

Bell's inequality shows that no local theory can reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics and the many experimental verifications of this theorem have shown that Nature does indeed behave nonlocally. In this graduate seminar we will look at how we can use this nonlocality to our benefit. I will explain how nonlocality can be used to reduce the communication complexity of problems, which is the amount of communication that is required for a distributed computation. This, despite the fact that nonlocality can not be used to transmit information. I will also describe some recent work on the consequences of 'superstrong nonlocality'.