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Relational Databases and Bell’s Theorem

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In Search of Elegance in the Theory and Practice of Computation

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8000))

Abstract

Our aim in this paper is to point out a surprising formal connection, between two topics which seem on face value to have nothing to do with each other: relational database theory, and the study of non-locality and contextuality in the foundations of quantum mechanics. We shall show that there is a remarkably direct correspondence between central results such as Bell’s theorem in the foundations of quantum mechanics, and questions which arise naturally and have been well-studied in relational database theory.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, UK

    Samson Abramsky

Authors
  1. Samson Abramsky
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania, 3330 Walnut St., 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Val Tannen

  2. School of Computing, National University of Singapore, 13 Computing Drive, 117417, Singapore, Singapore

    Limsoon Wong

  3. School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, 10 Crichton Street, EH8 9AB, Edinburgh, UK

    Leonid Libkin , Wenfei Fan  & Michael Fourman ,  & 

  4. Department of Computer Science, University of California, 1156 High Street, 95064, Santa Cruz, CA, USA

    Wang-Chiew Tan

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Abramsky, S. (2013). Relational Databases and Bell’s Theorem. In: Tannen, V., Wong, L., Libkin, L., Fan, W., Tan, WC., Fourman, M. (eds) In Search of Elegance in the Theory and Practice of Computation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8000. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41660-6_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41660-6_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-41659-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-41660-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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