A finite geometric toy model of space-time as an error correcting code

Abstract

A finite geometric model of space-time (which we call the bulk) is shown to emerge as a set of error correcting codes. The bulk is encoding a set of messages located in a blow up of the Gibbons-Hoffman-Wootters (GHW) discrete phase space for $n$-qubits (which we call the boundary). Our error correcting code is a geometric subspace code known from network coding, and the correspondence map is the finite geometric analogue of the Plücker map well-known form twistor theory. The $n=2$ case of the bulk-boundary correspondence is precisely the twistor correspondence where the boundary is playing the role of the twistor space and the bulk is a finite geometric version of compactified Minkowski space-time. For $n\geq 3$ the bulk is identified with the finite geometric version of the Brody-Hughston quantum space-time. For special regions on both sides of the correspondence we associate certain collections of qubit observables. On the boundary side this association gives rise to the well-known GHW quantum net structure. In this picture the messages are complete sets of commuting observables associated to Lagrangian subspaces giving a partition of the boundary. Incomplete subsets of observables corresponding to subspaces of the Lagrangian ones are regarded as corrupted messages. Such a partition of the boundary is represented on the bulk side as a special collection of space-time points. For a particular message residing in the boundary, the set of possible errors is described by the fine details of the light-cone structure of its representative space-time point in the bulk. The geometric arrangement of representative space-time points, playing the role of the variety of codewords, encapsulates an algebraic algorithm for recovery from errors on the boundary side.