Directed Graph Embeddings in Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

Directed Graph Embeddings in Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds Directed Graph Embeddings in Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds Aaron Sim 1 Maciej Wiatrak 1 Angus Brayne 1 Paid´ ´ı Creed 1 Saee Paliwal 1 Abstract at tractable ranks, without loss of information (Nickel et al., 2011; Bouchard et al., 2015), has spawned numerous em- The inductive biases of graph representation learn- bedding models with non-Euclidean geometries. Examples ing algorithms are often encoded in the back- range from complex manifolds for simultaneously encoding ground geometry of their embedding space. In symmetric and anti-symmetric relations (Trouillon et al., this paper, we show that general directed graphs 2016), to statistical manifolds for representing uncertainty can be effectively represented by an embedding (Vilnis & McCallum, 2015). model that combines three components: a pseudo- Riemannian metric structure, a non-trivial global One key development was the introduction of hyperbolic em- topology, and a unique likelihood function that beddings for representation learning (Nickel & Kiela, 2017; explicitly incorporates a preferred direction in 2018). The ability to uncover latent graph hierarchies was embedding space. We demonstrate the representa- applied to directed acyclic graph (DAG) structures in meth- tional capabilities of this method by applying it to ods like Hyperbolic Entailment Cones (Ganea et al., 2018), the task of link prediction on a series of synthetic building upon Order-Embeddings (Vendrov et al., 2016), and real directed graphs from natural language and Hyperbolic Disk embeddings (Suzuki et al., 2019), with applications and biology. In particular, we show the latter achieving good performance on complex DAGs that low-dimensional cylindrical Minkowski and with exponentially growing numbers of ancestors and de- anti-de Sitter spacetimes can produce equal or bet- scendants. Further extensions include hyperbolic generali- ter graph representations than curved Riemannian sations of manifold learning algorithms (Sala et al., 2018), manifolds of higher dimensions. product manifolds (Gu et al., 2018), and the inclusion of hyperbolic isometries (Chami et al., 2020). While these methods continue to capture more complex 1. Introduction graph topologies they are largely limited to DAGs with Representation learning of symbolic objects is a central transitive relations, thus failing to represent many naturally area of focus in machine learning. Alongside the design of occurring graphs, where cycles and non-transitive relations deep learning architectures and general learning algorithms, are common features. incorporating the right level of inductive biases is key to In this paper we introduce pseudo-Riemannian embeddings efficiently building faithful and generalisable entity and of both DAGs and graphs with cycles. Together with a relational embeddings (Battaglia et al., 2018). novel likelihood function with explicitly broken isometries, In graph representation learning, the embedding space ge- we are able to represent a wider suite of graph structures. ometry itself encodes many such inductive biases, even in In summary, the model makes the following contributions the simplest of spaces. For instance, vertices embedded to graph representation learning, which we will expand in arXiv:2106.08678v1 [stat.ML] 16 Jun 2021 as points in Euclidean manifolds, with inter-node distance more detail below: guiding graph traversal and link probabilities (Grover & Leskovec, 2016; Perozzi et al., 2014), carry the underlying • The ability to disentangle semantic and edge-based assumption of homophily with node similarity as a metric similarities using the distinction of space- and timelike function. separation of nodes in pseudo-Riemannian manifolds. The growing recognition that Euclidean geometry lacks the • The ability to capture directed cycles by introducing flexibility to encode complex relationships on large graphs a compact timelike embedding dimension. Here we consider Minkowski spacetime with a circle time di- 1BenevolentAI, London, UK. Correspondence to: Aaron Sim <[email protected]>. mension and anti-de Sitter spacetime. Proceedings of the 38 th International Conference on Machine • The ability to represent chains in a directed graph that Learning, PMLR 139, 2021. Copyright 2021 by the author(s). flexibly violate local transitivity. We achieve this by Directed Graph Embeddings in Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds way of a novel edge probability function that decays, partially ordered sets as sets of formal disks. asymmetrically, into the past and future timelike direc- These approaches all retain the partial-order transitivity as- tions. sumption where squared distances decrease monotonically into the future and past. We relax that assumption in our We illustrate the aforementioned features of our model by work, alongside considering graphs with cycles and mani- conducting a series of experiments on several small, simu- folds other than Minkowski spacetime. lated toy networks. Because of our emphasis on graph topol- Pseudo-Riemannian manifold optimization was formalized ogy, we focus on the standard graph embedding challenge in Gao et al.(2018) and specialized in Law & Stam(2020) of link prediction. Link prediction is the task of inferring the to general quadric surfaces in Lorentzian manifolds, which missing edges of, and often solely from, a partially observed includes anti-de Sitter spacetime as a special case. graph (Nickel et al., 2015). Premised on the assumption that the structures of real world graphs emerge from underlying For the remainder of the paper, nodes are points on a mani- mechanistic latent models (e.g. a biological evolutionary fold M, the probability of edges are functions of the node process responsible for the growth of a protein-protein inter- coordinates, and the challenge is to infer the optimal embed- action network, linguistic rules informing a language graph, dings via pseudo-Riemannian SGD on the node coordinates. etc), performance on the link prediction task hinges critically on one’s ability to render expressive graph representations, 2. Background which pseudo-Riemannian embeddings allow for beyond existing embedding methods. In this section we will provide a very brief overview of the relevant topics in differential geometry.2 With this in mind, we highlight the quality of pseudo- Riemannian embeddings over Euclidean and hyperbolic 2.1. Riemannian Manifold Optimization embeddings in link prediction experiments using both syn- thetic protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks and the The key difference between gradient-based optimization DREAM5 gold standard emulations of causal gene regula- of smooth functions f on Euclidean vs. non-Euclidean tory networks. Additionally, we show that our method has manifolds is that for the latter, the trivial isomorphsim, for comparable performance to DAG-specific methods such as any p 2 M, between a manifold M and the tangent space Disk Embeddings on the WordNet link prediction bench- TpM no longer holds in general. In particular, the stochastic 0 mark. Finally, we explore the ability of anti-de Sitter em- gradient descent (SGD) update step p p − λrfjp for beddings to further capture unique graph structures by ex- learning rate λ and gradient rf is generalized in two areas ploiting critical features of the manifold, such as its intrinsic (Bonnabel, 2013): 1 N S × R topology for representing directed cycles of dif- First, rf is replaced with the Riemannian gradient vector ferent lengths. field rf ! grad f := g−1df; (1) 1.1. Related Work −1 ∗ where g : Tp M! TpM is the inverse of the positive The disadvantages of Euclidean geometry compared to definite metric g, and df the differential one-form. Second, Minkowski spacetime for graph representation learning was the exponential map expp : TpM!M generalizes the first highlighted in Sun et al.(2015). It was followed by vector space addition in the update equation. For any vp 2 Clough & Evans(2017) who explore DAG representations TpM the first-order Taylor expansion is in Minkowski space, borrowing ideas from the theory of Causal Sets (Bombelli et al., 1987). More broadly, the f(expp(vp)) ≈ f(p) + g(grad fjp; vp); (2) asymptotic equivalence between complex networks and from which we infer that grad f defines the direction of large-scale causal structure of de Sitter spacetime was pro- steepest descent, i.e. the Riemannian-SGD (RSGD) update posed and studied in Krioukov et al.(2012). Our work is step is simply notably conceptually similar to the hyperbolic disk embed- ding approach (Suzuki et al., 2019) that embeds a set of 0 p expp(−λ grad fjp): (3) symbolic objects with a partial order relation as general- ized formal disks in a quasi-metric space (X; d). A formal The classes of manifolds considered here all have analytic disk (x; r) 2 X × R is defined by a center x 2 X and a expressions for the exponential map (see below). The curves 1 radius r 2 R. Inclusion of disks defines a partial order traced out by expp(tvp) for t 2 R are called geodesics - the on formal disks, which enables a natural representation of generalisation of straight lines to curved manifolds. 1Suzuki et al.(2019) generalize the standard definition of a 2For a longer introduction, see Robbin & Salamon(2013) and formal disk/ball to allow for negative radii. Isham(1999). Directed Graph Embeddings in Pseudo-Riemannian Manifolds 2.2. Pseudo-Riemannian Extension where by simple substitution N 1 A pseudo-Riemannian (or, equivalently, semi-Riemannian) 2 X 2 manifold is a manifold where g is non-degenerate but no r ≡ r(x) = 1 + xi : (8) longer positive definite. If g is diagonal with ±1 entries, it is i=1 a Lorentzian manifold. If g has just one negative eigenvalue, We define a circle time coordinate to be the arc length it is commonly called a spacetime manifold. vp is labelled ( −1 timelike if g(vp; vp) is negative, spacelike if positive, and r sin (x−1=r); x0 ≥ 0; t := rθ = −1 (9) lightlike or null if zero. r(π − sin (x−1=r)); x0 < 0; It was first noted in Gao et al.(2018) that grad f is not a with x-dependent periodicity t ∼ t + 2πr(x). guaranteed ascent direction when optimizing f on pseudo- Riemannian manifolds, because its squared norm is no The canonical coordinates and metric gL are not intrinsic longer strictly positive (see eq.
Recommended publications
  • The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems Revisited
    Classical singularity thms. Interlude: Low regularity in GR Low regularity singularity thms. Proofs Outlook The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems revisited Roland Steinbauer Faculty of Mathematics, University of Vienna Prague, October 2016 The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems revisited 1 / 27 Classical singularity thms. Interlude: Low regularity in GR Low regularity singularity thms. Proofs Outlook Overview Long-term project on Lorentzian geometry and general relativity with metrics of low regularity jointly with `theoretical branch' (Vienna & U.K.): Melanie Graf, James Grant, G¨untherH¨ormann,Mike Kunzinger, Clemens S¨amann,James Vickers `exact solutions branch' (Vienna & Prague): Jiˇr´ıPodolsk´y,Clemens S¨amann,Robert Svarcˇ The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems revisited 2 / 27 Classical singularity thms. Interlude: Low regularity in GR Low regularity singularity thms. Proofs Outlook Contents 1 The classical singularity theorems 2 Interlude: Low regularity in GR 3 The low regularity singularity theorems 4 Key issues of the proofs 5 Outlook The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems revisited 3 / 27 Classical singularity thms. Interlude: Low regularity in GR Low regularity singularity thms. Proofs Outlook Table of Contents 1 The classical singularity theorems 2 Interlude: Low regularity in GR 3 The low regularity singularity theorems 4 Key issues of the proofs 5 Outlook The Penrose and Hawking Singularity Theorems revisited 4 / 27 Theorem (Pattern singularity theorem [Senovilla, 98]) In a spacetime the following are incompatible (i) Energy condition (iii) Initial or boundary condition (ii) Causality condition (iv) Causal geodesic completeness (iii) initial condition ; causal geodesics start focussing (i) energy condition ; focussing goes on ; focal point (ii) causality condition ; no focal points way out: one causal geodesic has to be incomplete, i.e., : (iv) Classical singularity thms.
    [Show full text]
  • Closed Timelike Curves, Singularities and Causality: a Survey from Gödel to Chronological Protection
    Closed Timelike Curves, Singularities and Causality: A Survey from Gödel to Chronological Protection Jean-Pierre Luminet Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille , France; Centre de Physique Théorique de Marseille (France) Observatoire de Paris, LUTH (France) [email protected] Abstract: I give a historical survey of the discussions about the existence of closed timelike curves in general relativistic models of the universe, opening the physical possibility of time travel in the past, as first recognized by K. Gödel in his rotating universe model of 1949. I emphasize that journeying into the past is intimately linked to spacetime models devoid of timelike singularities. Since such singularities arise as an inevitable consequence of the equations of general relativity given physically reasonable assumptions, time travel in the past becomes possible only when one or another of these assumptions is violated. It is the case with wormhole-type solutions. S. Hawking and other authors have tried to save the paradoxical consequences of time travel in the past by advocating physical mechanisms of chronological protection; however, such mechanisms remain presently unknown, even when quantum fluctuations near horizons are taken into account. I close the survey by a brief and pedestrian discussion of Causal Dynamical Triangulations, an approach to quantum gravity in which causality plays a seminal role. Keywords: time travel; closed timelike curves; singularities; wormholes; Gödel’s universe; chronological protection; causal dynamical triangulations 1. Introduction In 1949, the mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel, who had previously demonstrated the incompleteness theorems that broke ground in logic, mathematics, and philosophy, became interested in the theory of general relativity of Albert Einstein, of which he became a close colleague at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton.
    [Show full text]
  • Light Rays, Singularities, and All That
    Light Rays, Singularities, and All That Edward Witten School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study Einstein Drive, Princeton, NJ 08540 USA Abstract This article is an introduction to causal properties of General Relativity. Topics include the Raychaudhuri equation, singularity theorems of Penrose and Hawking, the black hole area theorem, topological censorship, and the Gao-Wald theorem. The article is based on lectures at the 2018 summer program Prospects in Theoretical Physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, and also at the 2020 New Zealand Mathematical Research Institute summer school in Nelson, New Zealand. Contents 1 Introduction 3 2 Causal Paths 4 3 Globally Hyperbolic Spacetimes 11 3.1 Definition . 11 3.2 Some Properties of Globally Hyperbolic Spacetimes . 15 3.3 More On Compactness . 18 3.4 Cauchy Horizons . 21 3.5 Causality Conditions . 23 3.6 Maximal Extensions . 24 4 Geodesics and Focal Points 25 4.1 The Riemannian Case . 25 4.2 Lorentz Signature Analog . 28 4.3 Raychaudhuri’s Equation . 31 4.4 Hawking’s Big Bang Singularity Theorem . 35 5 Null Geodesics and Penrose’s Theorem 37 5.1 Promptness . 37 5.2 Promptness And Focal Points . 40 5.3 More On The Boundary Of The Future . 46 1 5.4 The Null Raychaudhuri Equation . 47 5.5 Trapped Surfaces . 52 5.6 Penrose’s Theorem . 54 6 Black Holes 58 6.1 Cosmic Censorship . 58 6.2 The Black Hole Region . 60 6.3 The Horizon And Its Generators . 63 7 Some Additional Topics 66 7.1 Topological Censorship . 67 7.2 The Averaged Null Energy Condition .
    [Show full text]
  • Problem Set 4 (Causal Structure)
    \Singularities, Black Holes, Thermodynamics in Relativistic Spacetimes": Problem Set 4 (causal structure) 1. Wald (1984): ch. 8, problems 1{2 2. Prove or give a counter-example: there is a spacetime with two points simultaneously con- nectable by a timelike geodesic, a null geodesic and a spacelike geodesic. 3. Prove or give a counter-example: if two points are causally related, there is a spacelike curve connecting them. 4. Prove or give a counter-example: any two points of a spacetime can be joined by a spacelike curve. (Hint: there are three cases to consider, first that the temporal futures of the two points intesect, second that their temporal pasts do, and third that neither their temporal futures nor their temporal pasts intersect; recall that the manifold must be connected.) 5. Prove or give a counter-example: every flat Lorentzian metric is temporally orientable. 6. Prove or give a counter-example: if the temporal futures of two points do not intersect, then neither do their temporal pasts. 7. Prove or give a counter-example: for a point p in a spacetime, the temporal past of the temporal future of the temporal past of the temporal future. of p is the entire spacetime. (Hint: if two points can be joined by a spacelike curve, then they can be joined by a curve consisting of some finite number of null geodesic segments glued together; recall that the manifold is connected.) 8. Prove or give a counter-example: if the temporal past of p contains the entire temporal future of q, then there is a closed timelike curve through p.
    [Show full text]
  • Theoretical Computer Science Causal Set Topology
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Theoretical Computer Science 405 (2008) 188–197 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Theoretical Computer Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tcs Causal set topology Sumati Surya Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India article info a b s t r a c t Keywords: The Causal Set Theory (CST) approach to quantum gravity is motivated by the observation Space–time that, associated with any causal spacetime (M, g) is a poset (M, ≺), with the order relation Causality ≺ corresponding to the spacetime causal relation. Spacetime in CST is assumed to have a Topology Posets fundamental atomicity or discreteness, and is replaced by a locally finite poset, the causal Quantum gravity set. In order to obtain a well defined continuum approximation, the causal set must possess the requisite intrinsic topological and geometric properties that characterise a continuum spacetime in the large. The study of causal set topology is thus dictated by the nature of the continuum approximation. We review the status of causal set topology and present some new results relating poset and spacetime topologies. The hope is that in the process, some of the ideas and questions arising from CST will be made accessible to the larger community of computer scientists and mathematicians working on posets. © 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V. 1. The spacetime poset and causal sets In Einstein’s theory of gravity, space and time are merged into a single entity represented by a pseudo-Riemannian or Lorentzian geometry g of signature − + ++ on a differentiable four dimensional manifold M.
    [Show full text]
  • Quantum Fluctuations and Thermodynamic Processes in The
    Quantum fluctuations and thermodynamic processes in the presence of closed timelike curves by Tsunefumi Tanaka A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Physics Montana State University © Copyright by Tsunefumi Tanaka (1997) Abstract: A closed timelike curve (CTC) is a closed loop in spacetime whose tangent vector is everywhere timelike. A spacetime which contains CTC’s will allow time travel. One of these spacetimes is Grant space. It can be constructed from Minkowski space by imposing periodic boundary conditions in spatial directions and making the boundaries move toward each other. If Hawking’s chronology protection conjecture is correct, there must be a physical mechanism preventing the formation of CTC’s. Currently the most promising candidate for the chronology protection mechanism is the back reaction of the metric to quantum vacuum fluctuations. In this thesis the quantum fluctuations for a massive scalar field, a self-interacting field, and for a field at nonzero temperature are calculated in Grant space. The stress-energy tensor is found to remain finite everywhere in Grant space for the massive scalar field with sufficiently large field mass. Otherwise it diverges on chronology horizons like the stress-energy tensor for a massless scalar field. If CTC’s exist they will have profound effects on physical processes. Causality can be protected even in the presence of CTC’s if the self-consistency condition is imposed on all processes. Simple classical thermodynamic processes of a box filled with ideal gas in the presence of CTC’s are studied. If a system of boxes is closed, its state does not change as it travels through a region of spacetime with CTC’s.
    [Show full text]
  • On the Categorical and Topological Structure of Timelike Homotopy Classes of Paths in Smooth Spacetimes
    ON THE CATEGORICAL AND TOPOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF TIMELIKE AND CAUSAL HOMOTOPY CLASSES OF PATHS IN SMOOTH SPACETIMES MARTIN GUNTHER¨ ∗ Institute of Algebra and Geometry, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Karlsruhe, Germany. Abstract. For a smooth spacetime X, based on the timelike homotopy classes of its timelike paths, we define a topology on X that refines the Alexandrov topology and always coincides with the manifold topology. The space of timelike or causal homotopy classes forms a semicategory or a category, respectively. We show that either of these algebraic structures encodes enough information to reconstruct the topology and conformal structure of X. Furthermore, the space of timelike homotopy classes carries a natural topology that we prove to be locally euclidean but, in general, not Hausdorff. The presented results do not require any causality conditions on X and do also hold under weaker regularity assumptions. 1. Main results For simplicity, (X; g) will be a smooth spacetime throughout this paper, i.e. a smooth time-oriented Lorentzian manifold. Nevertheless, all of the following results are true for a broader class of manifolds, namely C1-spacetimes that satisfy lemma 2.1, which is a local condition on the topology and chronological structure. Let P (X) be the space of paths in X, i.e. continuous maps [0; 1] ! X, and t c arXiv:2008.00265v2 [math.DG] 13 Aug 2021 P (X) ⊆ P (X) ⊆ P (X) the spaces of continuous future-directed timelike or causal paths in X. A juxtaposed pair of points x; y 2 X shall restrict t=c these sets to only paths from x to y.
    [Show full text]
  • K-Causal Structure of Space-Time in General Relativity
    PRAMANA °c Indian Academy of Sciences Vol. 70, No. 4 | journal of April 2008 physics pp. 587{601 K-causal structure of space-time in general relativity SUJATHA JANARDHAN1;¤ and R V SARAYKAR2 1Department of Mathematics, St. Francis De Sales College, Nagpur 440 006, India 2Department of Mathematics, R.T.M. Nagpur University, Nagpur 440 033, India ¤Corresponding author E-mail: sujata [email protected]; r saraykar@redi®mail.com MS received 3 January 2007; revised 29 November 2007; accepted 5 December 2007 Abstract. Using K-causal relation introduced by Sorkin and Woolgar [1], we generalize results of Garcia-Parrado and Senovilla [2,3] on causal maps. We also introduce causality conditions with respect to K-causality which are analogous to those in classical causality theory and prove their inter-relationships. We introduce a new causality condition fol- lowing the work of Bombelli and Noldus [4] and show that this condition lies in between global hyperbolicity and causal simplicity. This approach is simpler and more general as compared to traditional causal approach [5,6] and it has been used by Penrose et al [7] in giving a new proof of positivity of mass theorem. C0-space-time structures arise in many mathematical and physical situations like conical singularities, discontinuous matter distributions, phenomena of topology-change in quantum ¯eld theory etc. Keywords. C0-space-times; causal maps; causality conditions; K-causality. PACS Nos 04.20.-q; 02.40.Pc 1. Introduction The condition that no material particle signals can travel faster than the velocity of light ¯xes the causal structure for Minkowski space-time.
    [Show full text]
  • Flows Revisited: the Model Category Structure and Its Left Determinedness
    FLOWS REVISITED: THE MODEL CATEGORY STRUCTURE AND ITS LEFT DETERMINEDNESS PHILIPPE GAUCHER Abstract. Flows are a topological model of concurrency which enables to encode the notion of refinement of observation and to understand the homological properties of branchings and mergings of execution paths. Roughly speaking, they are Grandis' d-spaces without an underlying topological space. They just have an underlying homotopy type. This note is twofold. First, we give a new construction of the model category structure of flows which is more conceptual thanks to Isaev's results. It avoids the use of difficult topological arguments. Secondly, we prove that this model category is left determined by adapting an argument due to Olschok. The introduction contains some speculations about what we expect to find out by localizing this minimal model category structure. Les flots sont un mod`eletopologique de la concurrence qui permet d'encoder la no- tion de raffinement de l'observation et de comprendre les propri´et´eshomologiques des branchements et des confluences des chemins d'ex´ecution. Intuitivement, ce sont des d-espaces au sens de Grandis sans espace topologique sous-jacent. Ils ont seulement un type d'homotopie sous-jacent. Cette note a deux objectifs. Premi`erement de donner une nouvelle construction de la cat´egorie de mod`elesdes flots plus conceptuelle gr^aceau travail d'Isaev. Cela permet d'´eviterdes arguments topologiques difficiles. Deuxi`emement nous prouvons que cette cat´egoriede mod`elesest d´etermin´ee gauche en adaptant un argument de Olschok. L'introduction contient quelques sp´eculationssur ce qu'on s'attend `atrouver en localisant cette cat´egoriede mod`elesminimale.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:2105.02304V1 [Quant-Ph] 5 May 2021 Relativity and Quantum Theory
    Page-Wootters formulation of indefinite causal order Veronika Baumann,1, 2, 3, ∗ Marius Krumm,1, 2, ∗ Philippe Allard Gu´erin,1, 2, 4 and Caslavˇ Brukner1, 2 1Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria 2Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), Austrian Academy of Sciences, Boltzmanngasse 3, 1090 Vienna, Austria 3Faculty of Informatics, Universit`adella Svizzera italiana, Via G. Buffi 13, CH-6900 Lugano, Switzerland 4Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, 31 Caroline St. N, Waterloo, Ontario, N2L 2Y5, Canada (Dated: May 7, 2021) One of the most fundamental open problems in physics is the unification of general relativity and quantum theory to a theory of quantum gravity. An aspect that might become relevant in such a theory is that the dynamical nature of causal structure present in general relativity displays quantum uncertainty. This may lead to a phenomenon known as indefinite or quantum causal structure, as captured by the process matrix framework. Due to the generality of that framework, however, for many process matrices there is no clear physical interpretation. A popular approach towards a quantum theory of gravity is the Page-Wootters formalism, which associates to time a Hilbert space structure similar to spatial position. By explicitly introducing a quantum clock, it allows to describe time-evolution of systems via correlations between this clock and said systems encoded in history states. In this paper we combine the process matrix framework with a generalization of the Page-Wootters formalism in which one considers several observers, each with their own discrete quantum clock. We describe how to extract process matrices from scenarios involving such observers with quantum clocks, and analyze their properties.
    [Show full text]
  • Time in Causal Structure Learning
    Journal of Experimental Psychology: © 2018 American Psychological Association Learning, Memory, and Cognition 0278-7393/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xlm0000548 2018, Vol. 44, No. 12, 1880–1910 Time in Causal Structure Learning Neil R. Bramley Tobias Gerstenberg New York University Massachusetts Institute of Technology Ralf Mayrhofer David A. Lagnado University of Göttingen University College London A large body of research has explored how the time between two events affects judgments of causal strength between them. In this article, we extend this work in 4 experiments that explore the role of temporal information in causal structure induction with multiple variables. We distinguish two qualita- tively different types of information: The order in which events occur, and the temporal intervals between those events. We focus on one-shot learning in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, we explore how people integrate evidence from multiple observations of the same causal device. Participants’ judgments are well predicted by a Bayesian model that rules out causal structures that are inconsistent with the observed temporal order, and favors structures that imply similar intervals between causally connected components. In Experiments 3 and 4, we look more closely at participants’ sensitivity to exact event timings. Participants see three events that always occur in the same order, but the variability and correlation between the timings of the events is either more consistent with a chain or a fork structure. We show, for the first time, that even when order cues do not differentiate, people can still make accurate causal structure judgments on the basis of interval variability alone.
    [Show full text]
  • DIRECTED POINCARÉ DUALITY Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Outline 2 3. Ditopology 5 3.1. Streams 5 3.2. Cubical Sets 7 3.3. Compa
    DIRECTED POINCARE´ DUALITY SANJEEVI KRISHNAN Abstract. This paper generalizes ordinary Abelian sheaf (co)homology for sheaves of semimodules over locally preordered spaces. Motivating examples of locally preordered spaces are manifolds equipped with distinguished vector fields. Motivating examples of such homology and cohomology semimodules are the flows and Poincar´esections, re- spectively, of a dynamical system. The main result is a Poincar´eDuality for sheaves on spacetimes and generalizations admitting top-dimensional topological singularities, gen- eralizing flow-cut dualities on directed graphs. Explicit calculations for timelike surfaces and formulas for directed graphs are given. Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Outline 2 3. Ditopology 5 3.1. Streams 5 3.2. Cubical sets 7 3.3. Comparisons 8 4. (Co)homology 8 4.1. Cubical semimodules 8 4.2. Homology 8 4.3. Cohomology 10 5. Duality 12 5.1. Smoothness 12 5.2. Main result 12 5.3. Examples 14 Appendix 14 1. Introduction Semigroups are to dynamics as groups are to topology. The flows on a directed graph form a semigroup under edgewise addition. The unbounded causal curves on a spacetime, up to homotopies through such flows, generate a semigroup under formal sums. These semigroups are defined like ordinary first integral homology, but with the added restrictions that the coefficients be natural numbers and the chains respect the given dynamics. In order to capture structure finer than mere topology, the restrictions on coefficients and chains are inseparable; without both, the homology-like construction is just the Borel-Moore homology of the underlying space. 1 2 SANJEEVI KRISHNAN ∗ Directed sheaf (co)homology semigroups H∗(X; F);H (X; F), introduced in this paper, describe dynamics on a directed space X [5] subject to constraints given by a sheaf F of semi- modules on X.
    [Show full text]