A missing causal principle: Coordination
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2605.03132 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 4 May 2026] Title:A missing causal principle: Coordination Authors:Daniel Centeno, Antoine Coquet, Maria Ciudad Alañón, Lucas Tendick, Marc-Olivier Renou, Elie Wolfe View a PDF of the paper titled A missing causal principle: Coordination, by Daniel Centeno and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We introduce the coordination principle, which states that perfect coordination, in the form of agreement on a uniformly random output, among N parties is possible only if they share a common cause. This principle is purely causal and can be viewed as a multipartite generalization of Reichenbach's common cause principle. We prove that quantum information theory satisfy the coordination principle in any network, and derive noise-tolerant Bell-like inequalities that certify the presence of a common cause. We further show that the principle is not a consequence of no-signaling and independence alone by constructing a concrete operational probabilistic theory that obeys both principles while still allowing perfect coordination without a common cause. This possibility arises only in fully general causal scenarios with intermediate transformations between preparations and measurements. We also formulate a genuinely quantum coordination task, showing that the preparation of a multipartite GHZ state requires a quantum common cause, which can be certified by Bell-like inequalities which are experimentally testable. Finally, we discuss the open problem of finding a quantitative, noise-tolerant version of the coordination principle that constrains approximate coordination in any reasonable causal theory. This work is the extended version of the more compact letter and provides all the technical details of the proofs. Comments: Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2605.03132 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2605.03132v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.03132 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration) Submission history From: Daniel Centeno Díaz [view email] [v1] Mon, 4 May 2026 20:18:21 UTC (2,279 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled A missing causal principle: Coordination, by Daniel Centeno and 4 other authorsView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-05 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)