A unified quantum formalism characterizing spacelike and timelike events and their quantum information aspects

We describe spacelike and timelike (causally connected) events on an equal footing by utilizing detectors coupled to timers that store information about a given system and the moment of measurement. By tracing out the system and focusing on the detectors’ and timers’ states, events are represented by a tensor product structure. Furthermore, including a time register gives rise to a temporal superposition analogous to the familiar spatial superposition in quantum mechanics. We verify that the presence of coherence can ensure a causal connection between events. We also propose a causal correlation function involving the detection times to characterize the type of events. Finally, we verify that our formalism allows us to simultaneously apply quantum information concepts to spacelike and timelike events. In this context we observe, in the limit of “instantaneous” measurements, a deterministic relationship between causally connected events similar to that of spatially entangled physical systems; i.e. observing the state of one of the systems (in our case, knowing a previous event), enables us to learn precisely the state of the other system (we delineate a later event).